YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE

Bruce Wagner

Details magazine. March 1994.

With his vision of a separate reality, Carlos Castaneda transfixed a generation. In a rare
interview, the legendary sorcerer talks to Bruce Wagner about don Juan, freedom,
dreaming, and death-and the funny things that happen on the way to infinity.

Page Table of Contents

2 COMMON SENSE KILLS
2 THIS WAY OUT
3 THE OFFENDING PARTY
3 SORCERY ACTION THEATER
4 THE ENORMOUS DOOR
5 THE WHORES OF PERCEPTION
6 THE EXQUISITE APE
6 CRITICAL MASS
8 THE NATURAL HERITAGE OF SENTIENT BEINGS
8 NO SE HABLA ESPAÑOL AQUÍ
9 SORCERY 10 1
9 THE TRACKS OF TIME
11 FALLING IN LOVE AGAIN
11 RECAPITULATE YOUR LIFE
12 EVERYTHING YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT ENERGY...
13 THE COYOTE TRAIL
14 CARLOS CASTANEDA PRIVATE PARTS
15 THE CRITERIA FOR BEING DEAD
15 ASSEMBLING AWARENESS
16 BOYCOTTING THE PAGEANT
18 THE GUESTS ARRIVE
18 THE INDEX OF INTENT
20 POOR BABYISM
20 CONFESSIONS OF AN AWARENESS ADDICT
21 THE PLUMED SERPENT
21 THE LONELINESS OF THE L0NG-DISTANCE REPLICANT
22 A FOOTNOTE TO FEMINISTS
22 FOR YOUR EYES ONLY
24 ITCH OF THE NAGUAL
24 THE DIMMING OF LIGHTS
FOUR YOGAS OF ENLIGHTENMENT:
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Carlos Castaneda doesn't live here anymore. After years of rigorous discipline--
-years of warriorism---he has escaped the ratty theater of everyday life. He is
an empty man, a funnel, a teller of tales and stories; not really a man at all,
but a being who no longer has attachments to the world as we know it. He is the
last nagual, the cork in a centuries---old lineage of sorcerers whose triumph
was to break the "agreement" of normal reality. With the release of his ninth
book, The Art of Dreaming, he has surfaced---for a moment, and in his way.

COMMON SENSE KILLS

My name is Carlos Castaneda. I would like you to do something today. I would

like you to suspend judgment. Please: don't come here armed with "common
sense." People find out I'm going to be talking---however they hear---and they
come to dis Castaneda. To hurt me. "I have read your books and they are
infantile." "All of your later books are boring. Don't come that way. It's
useless. Today I want to ask you, just for an hour, to open yourself to the
option I'm going to present. Don't listen like honor students. I've spoken to
honor students before; they're dead and arrogant. Common sense and
idealities are what kill us. We hold onto them with our teeth---that's the "ape."

That's what don Juan Matus called us: insane apes. I have not been available
for thirty years. I don't go and talk to people. For a moment, I'm here. A
month, maybe two . . . then I'll disappear. We're not insular, not just now. We
cannot be that way. We have an indebtedness to pay to those who took the
trouble to show us certain things. We inherited this knowledge; don Juan told
us not to be apologetic. We want you to see there are weird, pragmatic options
that are not beyond your reach. I get exotic enjoyment at observing such
flight---pure esotericism. It is for my eyes only. I'm not needy; I don't need
anything. I need you like I need a hole in the head. But I am a voyager, a
traveler. I navigate---out there. I would like others to have the possibility.

THIS WAY OUT

The navigator has spoken before groups in San Francisco and Los Angeles, and
his cohorts---Florinda Donner-Grau, Taisha Abelar, and Carol Tiggs--- have
given lectures ("Toltec Dreaming---The Legacy of Don Juan") in Arizona, Maui,
and at Esalen. In the last two years, Donner-Grau's and Abelar's books (in
which they discuss Castaneda and their tutelage under don Juan Matus) have
entered the marketplace: Being-in-Dreaming and The Sorcerer's Crossing,
respectively. The accounts of these two women are a phenomenological mother
lode, bona fide chronicles of their initiation and training. They are also a great
windfall, for never have readers of Castaneda had access to such direct
illuminating reinforcement of his experience. ( "The women are in charge," he
says. "It is their game. I am merely the Filipino chauffeur"). Donner-Grau
describes the collective consensus of these works as "intersubjectivity among
sorcerers"; each one is like a highly individualistic road map of the same city.
They are 'energetic" enticements, a perceptual call to freedom rooted in a
single, breathtaking premise--- We must take responsibility for the non-
negotiable fact that we are beings who are going to die. One is struck by the
cogency of their case, and for good reason. The players, all Ph.D.'s from
UCLA's department of anthropology, are stupendous methodologists whose
academic disciplines are in fact oddly suited for describing the magical world
they present---a configuration of energy called "the second attention." Not a

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place for the timid New Ager.

THE OFFENDING PARTY

I do not lead a double life. I live this life: There is no gap between what I say
and what I do. I am not here to pull your chain, or to be entertaining. What I
am going to talk about today are not my opinions---they are those of don Juan
Matus, the Mexican Indian who showed me this other world. So don't be
offended! Juan Matus presented me with a working system backed by twenty
seven generations of sorcerers. Without him I would be an old man, a book
under my arm, walking with students on the quad. See, we always leave a
safety valve; that's why we don't jump. "If all else fails, I can teach
anthropology. " We are already losers with losers' scenarios. "I'm Dr.
Castaneda . . . and this is my book, The Teachings of Don Juan. Did you know
it's in paperback?" I would be the "one book" man---the burnt-out genius.
"Did you know it's in a twelfth edition? It's just been translated into Russian."

Or maybe I'd be parking your car and mouthing platitudes: "It's too hot . . .it's
fine, but it's too hot. It's too cold . . . it's fine, but it's too cold. I gotta go to the
tropics . . . "

SORCERY ACTION THEATER

In 1960, Castaneda was a graduate student in anthropology at UCLA. While in

Arizona researching the medicinal properties of plants, he met a Yaqui Indian
who agreed to help. The young fieldworker offered five dollars an hour for the
services of don Juan Matus, his picturesque guide. The usher refused.
Unbeknownst to Castaneda, the old peasant in huaraches was a peerless
sorcerer, a nagual who artfully drafted him as a player in the Myth of Energy
(Abelar calls it Sorcery Action Theater). In payment for his services, don Juan
asked for something different: Castaneda's "total attention."

The astonishing book born of this encounter---The Teachings of Don Juan: A

Yaqui Way of Knowledge---became an instant classic, neatly blowing the
hinges off the doors of perception and electrifying a generation. Since then, he
has continued "to peel away at the onion, adding journals of his experience,
magisterial elucidations of nonordinary realities that erode the self. A sweeping
title for the work might be The Disappearance of Carlos Castaneda.

We need to find a different word for sorcery," he says. "It's too dark. We
associate it with medieval absurdities: ritual, evil. I like 'warriorism' or
'navigation.' That's what sorcerers do they navigate."

He has written that a working definition of sorcery is "to perceive energy

directly." Sorcerers said that the essence of the universe resembled a matrix of
energy shot through by incandescent strands of consciousness-actual
awareness. Those strands formed "braids containing all-inclusive worlds, each
as real as this ours is merely one among an infinity. The sorcerers call the
world we know the "human band" or "the first attention."

They also saw the essence of the human form. It was not merely an apelike
amalgamation of skin and bones, but an eggshaped ball of luminosity capable
of traveling along those incandescent strands to other worlds. Then what held
it back? The sorcerers' idea is we are entombed by social upbringing, tricked
into perceiving the world as a place of hard objects and finalities. We go to our

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graves denying we are magical beings; our agenda is to service the ego
instead of the spirit. Before we know it, the battle is over---we die squalidly
shackled to the Self. Don Juan Matus made an intriguing proposition: What
would happen if Castaneda redeployed his troops? if he freed the energy
routinely engaged by the aggressions of courtship and mating? if he curtailed
self-importance and withdrew from the "defense, maintenance, and
presentation" of the ego---if he ceased to worry whether he was liked,
acknowledged, or admired? Would he gain enough energy to see a crack in the
world? And if he did, might he go through? The old Indian had hooked him on
the "intent" of the sorcerers' world.

But what does Castaneda do during the day?

Talks to the crazy apes. For now, anyway---in private homes, ballet studios,
bookstores. They make pilgrimages from the world over: icons of New
Awareness past, present, and future, energy groupies, shrinks and shamans,
lawyers, Deadheads, drummers, debunkers and lucid dreamers, scholars,
socialites and seducers, channelers, meditators and moguls, even lovers and
cronies "from 10,000 years ago." Furious note takers come, junior naguals in
the making. Some will write books about him; the lazier ones, chapters. Others
will give seminars---that is, for a fee. "They come to listen for a few hours, "he
says, "and the next weekend they are giving lectures on Castaneda. That's the
ape." He stands before them hours at a time enticing and exhorting their
energy bodies," and the effect is hot and cold all at once, like dry ice. With
numinous finesse, he wrests savage tales of freedom and power like scarves
from the empty funnel---moving, elegant, obscene, hilarious, bloodcurdling,
and surgically precise. Ask me anything! comes the entreaty. What would you
like to know?

Why were Castaneda and Co. making themselves accessible? Why now? What
was in it for them?

THE ENORMOUS DOOR

There is someone who goes into me unknown and waits for us to join her.
She's called Carol Tiggs---my counterpart. She was with us, then vanished. Her
disappearance lasted ten years. Where she went is inconceivable. It does not
yield to rationality. So please suspend judgment! We were going to have
bumper sticker.

COMMON SENSE KILLS

Carol Tiggs went away. She was not living in the mountains of New Mexico, I
assure you. One day I was giving a lecture at the Phoenix Bookstore and she
materialized. My heart jumped out of my shirt fomp fomp fomp. I kept talking.
I talked for two hours without knowing what I was saying. I took her outside
and asked her where she had been---ten years! She became cagey and started
to sweat. She had only vague recollections. She made jokes.

The reappearance of Carol Tiggs opened an enormous door---energetically---

through which we come and go. There's a huge entry where I can hook you to
the intent of sorcery. Her return gave us a new ring of power; she brought with
her a tremendous mass of energy that allows us to come out. That's why we
are available at this moment. Someone was introduced to Carol Tiggs at a
lecture. He said, "But you look so normal." Carol Tiggs said: "What did you

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expect? Lightning coming out of my tits?"

THE WHORES OF PERCEPTION

Who is Carlos Castaneda, and does he have a life?

It's 1994 already: Why doesn't he just get it over with? Tell us his age and
have Avedon take the picture. Hasn't anyone told him that privacy is dead?
That the revelation of details no longer diminishes? In exchange for our total
attention, he's got to orient us. There are things one would like to know---
mundane, personal things. Like where does he live? What did he think of
Sinatra's Duets? What has he done with the egregious profits from his books?
Does he drive a turbo Bentley like all the big old Babas? Was that really him
with Michael Jordan and Edmund White at uptown Barneys?

They've been trying to pin him down for years.

They even reconstructed his face from memories of old colleagues and dubious
acquaintances; the absurd result looks like a police artist's rendering of
benevolent Olmec man for Reader's Digest. In the '70s, a photo appeared in a
Time cover story (only the eyes were visible)---when the magazine learned the
model was a counterfeit, they never forgave him.

Around when Paul McCartney was declared dead, the rumor solidified. Carlos
Castaneda was Margaret Mead.

His agent and lawyers are full-time hedges against the onslaught of
correspondents and crazies, spiritual hang gliders, New Age movers and
seekers, artists wishing to adapt his work--- famous and unknown, with or
without permission---and bogus seminars replete with Carlos impersonators.
After thirty years, there is still no price on his head. He has no interest in gurus
or guruism; there will be no turbo Bentleys, no ranches of turbaned devotees,
no guest-edit of Paris Vogue. There will be no Castaneda Institute, no Center
for Advanced Sorcery Studies, no Academy of Dreaming---no infomercials,
mushrooms, or Tantric sex. There will be no biographies and there will be no
scandals. When he's invited to lecture, Castaneda receives no fee and offers to
pay his travel fare. The gate is usually a few dollars, to cover rental of the hall.
All that is asked of attendees is their total attention.

"Freedom is free," he says. "It cannot be bought or understood. With my

books, I've tried to present an option---that awareness can be a medium for
transportation or movement. I haven't been so convincing; they think I'm
writing novels. If I were tall and handsome, things might be different---they
would listen to the Big Daddy. People say, 'You're lying.' How could I be lying?
You only lie to get something, to manipulate. I don't want anything from
anyone --- only consensus. We'd like there to be consensus that there are
worlds besides our own. If there's consensus to grow wings then there'll be
flight. With consensus comes mass; with mass there will be movement."

Castaneda and his confederates are the energetic radicals of what may be the
only significant revolution of our time --- nothing short of transforming the
biological imperative into an evolutionary one. If the sovereign social order
commands procreation, the fearless order of sorcerers (energetic pirates all) is
after something less, well, terrestrial. Their startling, epochal intent is to leave

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the earth the way don Juan did twenty years before: as sheer energy,
awareness intact. Sorcerers call this somersault "the abstract flight."

THE EXQUISITE APE

When I was young, I used to idolize Alan Watts. After I became "Carlos
Castaneda," I had entree and went to him. He scared the living daylights out of
me. He was not what he pretended to be---he asked me to bed. I said, "Hey
Alan, what is this? "But Carlos," he said, "don't you see the beauty? That I'm
able to understand perfection, yet cannot attain my beliefs? I am imperfect but
embrace the weakness it means to be human." That's harseshit. I told him: "I
know people who say the opposite; they do what they say. And they live to
prove we a sublime." There is a woman, big spiritualist. Millions of dollars go
though her hands---she's been doing it twenty years. I went to see he4r at
someone' house and she was stroking the crotch of a man, right in front of
where I stood. Was she doing it to impress me? To shock? I cannot be
shocked. Later, I cornered her in the kitchen. I said, "What do you say to
yourself when you're alone in the middle of the night?" Don Juan used to put
that question to me. "What do you say when you're alone and you look in the
mirror?" "Ah, Carlos," she said, "that's the secret. Never to be alone." Is that
really the secret? Never to be alone? How horrendous. That's a shitty secret.

This Yaqui sorcerer asked me to suspend judgment for three days---to believe
for three days that to be human was not to be weak, but to be sublime. Either
one is true, yes…but how much more powerful to be sublime.! The ape is
insane, but also exquisite. Don Juan was a frigging ape---but he was in
impeccable warrior. He left the world, intact. He became energy; he burned
from within.

He used to say, "I was born a dog…but I don't have to die like one. Do you
want to live like your father?" He asked me that. "Do you want to die like your
grandfather?" Then came the bit question: "What are you going to do to avoid
dying that way?" I didn't answer---I didn't have to. The answer was:
"Nothing." A terrifying moment. How that haunted me.

CRITICAL MASS

I met with Castaneda and "the witches" over a period of a week at restaurants,
hotel rooms, and malls. They're attractive and vibrantly youthful. The women
dress unobtrusively, with a touch of casual chic. You wouldn't notice them in a
crowd, and that's the point.

I skimmed a New Yorker outside the cafe of the Regent Beverly Wilshire. The
ad for Drambuie seemed particularly hideous: Inevitably, no matter how much
we struggle, In one way or another, one day we become our parents. Instead
of resisting this notion, we invite you to celebrate this rite of passage with an
exquisite liquor ... Don Juan was laughing in his grave --- or out of it, which
brought to mind a welter of questions: Where was he anyway? The same place
Carol Tiggs came back from? If that were so, did that mean the old nagual was
capable of such reentry? In The Fire From Within Castaneda wrote that don
Juan and his party evanesced sometime in 1973---fourteen navigators gone, to
the "second attention." What exactly was the second attention? It all seemed
clear when I was reading the books. I searched my notes. I'd scrawled "second
attention = heightened awareness" on the margin of a page, but that didn't
help. Impatiently, I riffled through The Power of Silence, The Eagle's Gift,
Journey to Ixtlan. Though there was much throughout I didn't understand, the

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basics had been thoroughly, coherently described. Why couldn't I hold any of it
in my head?

I was failing Sorcery 101.

I ordered a cappuccino and waited. I let my mind drift. I thought about

Donner-Grau and the Japanese monkeys. When I'd spoken to her on the phone
to arrange an interview, she'd mentioned Imo. Every anthropology student
knows about Imo, the famous macaque. One day Imo spontaneously washed
off a sweet potato before eating it; in a short while, the macaques of the entire
island followed suit. Anthropologists might call this "cultural" behavior, but
Donner-Grau said it was a perfect example of critical mass---monkey
intersubjectivity.

Castaneda appeared. He smiled broadly, shook my hand, and sat down. I was
about to bring up the monkeys when he began to weep. The forehead crinkled;
his entire body convulsed in lamentation. Soon he was gasping like a grouper
thrown from the tank. His lower lip twitched, wet and electrified. His arm
unfurled toward me, the hand palsied and trembling---then it opened like a
night---blooming bud from Little Shop of Horrors, as if to receive alms.

"Please!" He declared a shaky truce with his facial muscles just to spit out the
words. He bore down on me in needy supplication. "Please love me!"

Castaneda was sobbing again, a great broken, choking hydrant, his bathos
effortless as he became an obscene weeping contraption. "That's what we are:
apes with tin cups. So routinary, so weak. Masturbatory. We are sublime, but
the insane ape lacks the energy to see---so the brain of the beast prevails. We
cannot grab our window of opportunity, our 'cubic centimeter of chance.' How
could we? We're too busy holding onto Mommy's hand. Thinking how wonderful
we are, how sensitive, how unique. We are not unique! The scenarios of our
lives have already been written," he said, grinning ominously, "by others. We
know . . . but we don't care. Fuck it, we say. We are the ultimate cynics. Cono!
Carajo! That's how we live! In a gutter of warm shit. What have they done to
us? That's what don Juan used to say. He used to ask me, 'How's the carrot?'
'What do you mean?' 'The carrot they shoved up your ass.' I was terribly
offended; he could really do it to me! That's when he said, 'Be grateful they
haven't put a handle on it yet.' "

"But if we have a choice, why do we stay in the gutter?"

"It's too warm. We don't want to leave---we hate to say goodbye. And we
worry---ooo-fa, how we worry---twenty-six hours a day! And what do you
think we worry about?" He smiled again, a rubbery Cheshire cat. "About me!
What about me? What's in it for me? What's gonna happen to me? Such
egomania! So horrendous. But fascinating! "

I told him his views seemed a little harsh, and he laughed. "Yes," he said, in
the ludicrously constipated, judgey tones of an academic. "Castaneda is a
bitter and insane old man." His caricatures were drolly, brutally on target.

"The greedy ape reaches through a grate for a seed and cannot relinquish
control. There are studies; nothing will make him drop that seed. The hand will
cling even after you hack off the arm---we die holding onto mierda. But why?

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Is that all there is---like Miss Peggy Lee said? That cannot be; That's too
horrendous. We have to learn how to let go. We collect memories and paste
them in books, ticket stubs to a Broadway show ten years ago. We die holding
onto souvenirs. To be a sorcerer is to have the energy, curiosity, and guts to
let go, to somersault into the unknown---all one needs is some retooling,
redefinition. We must see ourselves as beings who are going to die. Once you
accept that, worlds open up for you. But to embrace this definition, you must
have 'balls of steel.' "

THE NATURAL HERITAGE OF SENTIENT BEINGS

When you say "mountain" or "tree" or "White House," you invoke a universe of
detail with a single utterance; that's magic. See, we're visual creatures. You
could lick the White House---smell it, touch it---and it wouldn't tell you
anything. But one look, and you know everything there is to know: the "cradle
of democracy," whatever. You don't even need to look, you already see Clinton
sitting inside, Nixon on his knees praying---whatever. Our world is an
agglutination of detail, an avalanche of glosses---we don't perceive, we merely
interpret. And our interpretation system has made us lazy and cynical. We
prefer to say "Castaneda's a liar" or "This business of perceptual options just
isn't for me." What is for you? What's "real"? This hard, shitty, meaningless
daily world? Are despair and senility what's real? That the world is "given" and
"final" is a fallacious concept. From an early age we get "membership." One
day, when we've learned the shorthand of interpretation, the world says
"welcome." Welcome to what? To prison. Welcome to hell. What if it turns out
that Castaneda is inventing nothing? If that's true, then you're in a very bad
spot.

The interpretation system can be interrupted; it is not final. There are worlds
within worlds, each as real as this. In that wall over there is a world, this room
is a universe of detail. Autistics get caught, frozen in detail---they trace a
finger on the crack until it bleeds. We get caught in the room of everyday life.
There are options other than this world, as real as this room, places where you
can live or die. Sorcerers do that---how exciting! To think that this is the only
all---inclusive world . . .that's the epitome of arrogance. Why not open the
door to another room? That's the natural heritage of sentient beings. It's time
to interpret and construct new glosses. Go to a place where there's no a priori
knowledge. Don't throw away your old system of interpretation---use it, from
nine to five. After five? Magic hour.

NO SE HABLA ESPAÑOL AQUÍ

But what does he mean by "magic hour"?

Their books are meticulously detailed evocations of the unknown, yet the irony
remains; there's no real Lexicon for their experience. Magic hour isn't word-
friendly---its surplus energies are experienced bodily. Whenever Castaneda left
don Juan to return to Los Angeles, the old nagual liked to say he knew what his
student would be up to. He could make a list, he said---maybe a long list, but
still, a list---upon which Castaneda's thoughts and actions could inevitably be
found. But it was impossible for Castaneda to do the same for his teacher.
There was no intersubjectivity between the two men. Whatever it was the
Indian did in the second attention could only be experienced , not conveyed.
Back then, Castaneda had neither the energy nor the preparation it took for

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such consensus.

But the ape is possessed by words and syntax. He must understand, at all
costs. And there must be regimen to his understanding.

"We are linear beings: dangerous creatures of habit and repetition. We need to
know: There's the chicken place! There's the shoelace place! There's the car
wash! If one day one of them isn't there---we go bananas." He insisted on
paying for lunch. When the waiter returned with the slip, I had a sudden urge
to grab the credit card and see if it was in his name. He caught my glance.

"A business manager tried to get me to do the old American Express ad:
CARLOS CASTANEDA, MEMBER since 1968." He laughed gleefully, circling back
to his theme. "We are heavy, heavy apes, very ritualistic. My friend Ralph used
to see his grandmother on Monday nights. She died. And he said, 'Hey Joe---I
was Joe then---'hey Joe, now we can get together on Monday nights. Are you
free Mondays, Joe? 'You mean every Monday, Ralph?' 'Yes, yes! Every Monday.
Won't it be great?' 'But every Monday? forever?' 'Yes, Joe! You and me on
Mondays---forever!' "

SORCERY 101

I met a scientist at a party---a well---known man. Eminent. A luminary. "Dr.

X." He wanted to dis me, heavily. He said, "I read your first book; the rest
were boring. Look, I'm not interested in anecdotes. I'm interested in proof."
Dr. X confronted me. He must have thought l was as important as he was. I
said, "If I was to prove the law of gravity, wouldn't you need a degree of
training to follow me? You'd need 'membership'--- maybe even equipment.
You'd need to have taken Physics 1, 2, 16, maybe even Physics 23. You'd have
already made tremendous sacrifices to learn: to go to school, to study long
hours. You may even have stopped dating. " I told him if he wanted proof he'd
have to take Sorcery 101. But he wouldn't do that; that takes preparation. He
got angry and left the room. Sorcery is a flow, a process. Just as in physics you
need certain knowledge to follow the flow of the equations, Dr. X would have
had to do some very basic things to be in a position to have enough energy to
understand the flow of sorcery. He would have had to "recapitulate" his life.
So: the scientist wanted proof but didn't want to prepare. That's the way we
are. We don't want to do the work---we want to be helicoptered to awareness,
without getting mud in our shoesies. And if we don't like what we see, we
want to be helicoptered back.

THE TRACKS OF TIME

It is tiring being with this man. He's overly, ruthlessly present--- the fullness of
his attention exhausts. He seems to respond to my queries with all he has;
there's a liquid, eloquent urgency to his speech, dogged and final, elegant,
elegiac. Castaneda said he feels time "advancing" upon him. You sense his
weight, something foreign you can't identify, ethereal yet indolent, densely
inert--- like a plug or buoy, a cork lying heavily on the waves.

We're walking in Boyle Heights. He stops to demonstrate a martial arts position

called the horse---legs slightly bent, as if in the saddle. "They stood like this in
Buenos Aires---in my day. Everything was very stylized. They were adopting
the poses of men long dead. My grandfather stood this way. The muscle under
here"---he points to the backside of his thigh---"that's where we store

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nostalgia. Self-pity is a most horrendous thing."

"What did you mean about 'time advancing' on you?"

'Don Juan had a metaphor. We stand in a caboose, watching the tracks of time
recede. 'there I am a five years old! There I go ---' We have merely to turn
around and let the time advance on us. That way, there are no a prioris.
Nothing is presumed; nothing presupposed; nothing neatly packaged."

We sat on a bus bench. Across the street a beggar held a piece of cardboard
for the motorists. Castaneda stared past him toward the horizon. "I don't have
a tinge of tomorrow---and nothing from the past. The department of
anthropology doesn't exist for me anymore. Don Juan used to say the first part
of his life was a waste---he was in limbo. The second part of his life was
absorbed in the future; the third, in the past, nostalgia. Only the last part of
his life was now. That's where I am."

I decided to ask something personal and prepared to be rebuffed. For them,

biographical evidence will mesmerize as surely as a crack in the wall---leaving
everyone with bloody fingers.

"When you were a boy, who was the most important man in your life?"

"My grandfather --- he raised me." His hard eyes were glinting. "He had a stud
pig called Rudy. Made a lot of money. Rudy had a little blond face---gorgeous.
They used to put a hat on him, a vest. My grandfather made a tunnel from the
sty to the showroom. There would come Rudy with his midget face, trailing this
huge body behind! Rudy, with his screwdriver pincho; we watched that pig
commit barbarities."

"What was he like---your grandfather.''

"I adored him. He was the one who made the agenda; I was going to carry his
banner. That was my fate, but not my destiny. My grandfather was an amorous
man. He schooled me in seduction at an early age. When I was twelve, I
walked like him, talked like him---with a constricted larynx. He's the one who
taught me to 'go in through the window.' He said women would run if I
approached them head-on---I was too plain. He made me go up to little girls
and say: 'You're so beautiful!' Then I'd turn and walk away. 'You are the most
beautiful girl I have ever seen!'---quickly walk away. After three or four times
they'd say, 'Hey! Tell me your name.' That's how I got 'in through the
window.’”

He got up and walked. The beggar was heading for the bushy dead zone that
surrounded the freeway. When we got to his car, Castaneda opened the door
and stood a moment.

"A sorcerer asked me a question, a long time ago: What kind of face does the
bogeyman have, for you? I was intrigued. This thing I thought would be
shadowy, murky, had a human face--- the bogeyman often has the face of
something you think you love. For me, it was my grandfather. My grandfather,
who I adored. I got in and he started the car. The last part of the beggar
disappeared into the grubby hedgerow.”

"I was my grandfather. Dangerous, mercenary, conniving. petty, vindictive,

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filled with doubt---and immovable. Don Juan knew this."

FALLING IN LOVE AGAIN

At seventy-five, we're still looking for "love" and "companionship." My

grandfather used to wake up in the middle of the night crying, "Do you think
she loves me?" His last words were, "Here I go baby, here I go!" He had a big
orgasm and died. For years I thought that was the greatest thing---
magnificent. Then don Juan said, "Your grandfather died like a pig. His life and
death had no meaning."

Don Juan said death can't be soothing--- only triumph can. I asked him what
he meant by triumph and he said freedom: when you break through the veil
and take your life force with you. "But there's still so much that I want to do!
"He said, "You mean there are still so many women you want to fuck." He was
right. That's how primitive we are.

The ape will consider the unknown, but before he jumps he demands to know:
What's in it for me? We're businessmen, investors, used to cutting our losses--
-it's a merchant's world. If we make an "investment," we want guarantees. We
fall in love but only if we're loved back. When we don't love anymore, we cut
the head off and replace it with another. Our "love" is merely hysteria. We are
not affectionate beings, we are heartless.

I thought I knew how to love. Don Juan said, "How could you? They never
taught you about love. They taught you how to seduce, to envy, to hate. You
don't even love yourself---otherwise you wouldn't have put your body through
such barbarities. You don't have the guts to love like a sorcerer. Could you love
forever, beyond death? Without the slightest reinforcement---nothing in
return? Could you love without investment, for the piss of it? You'll never
know what it's like to love like that, relentlessly. Do you really want to die
without knowing?"

No---I didn't. Before I die, I have to know what it's like to love like that. He
hooked me that way. When I opened my eyes, I was already rolling down the
hill. I'm still rolling.

RECAPITULATE YOUR LIFE!

I had too many Cokes and was paranoid.

Castaneda said sugar is as effective a killer as common sense. "We are not
'psychological' creatures. Our neuroses are by---products of what we put in our
mouths.'--- I was certain he saw my "energy body" irradiating cola. I felt
absurd, defeated---I decided I would binge that night on profiteroles. Such is
the piquant, dark-chocolated shame of the picayune ape.

"I had a great love affair with Coke. My grandfather possessed a

pseudosensuality.

' I gotta have that pussy! I need it! I need it now!' My grandfather thought he
was the hottest dick in town. Most extravagant. I had the same thing---
everything went right to my balls, but it wasn't real. Don Juan told me, 'You're
being triggered by sugar. You're too flimsy to have that kind of sexual energy.'
Too fat to have this 'hot dick."'

Everyone's smoking in Universal CityWalk. Strange, sitting with Carlos

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Castaneda in this architectural approximation of middle-class Los Angeles---

this "agglutination of detail," this 'avalanche of glosses" that is a virtual city.
There are no black people and nothing resembling heightened awareness;
we've shifted from the human band to the band of MCA. We are inhabiting a
perversely bland version of a familiar scene from his books, the one where he
abruptly finds himself in a simulacrum of the everyday world.

"You said that if Dr. X had 'recapitulated his life,' he might have retrieved some
energy. What did you mean?"

"The recapitulation is the most important thing we do. To begin, you make a
list of everyone you ever knew. Everyone you ever spoke to or had dealings
with."

"Everyone?"

"Yes. You go down the list, chronologically re-creating the scenes of exchange."
"But that could take years."

"Sure. A thorough recapitulation takes a long time. And then you start over.
We are never through recapitulating---that way there's no residue. See, there's
no 'rest.' Rest is a middle-class concept---the idea that if you work hard
enough, you've earned a vacation. Time to go four-wheeling in the Range
Rover or fishing in Montana. That's horseshit."

"You re-create the scene ... "

"Start with sexual encounters. You see the sheets, the furniture, the dialogue.
Then get to the person, the feeling. What were you feeling? Watch! Breathe in
the energy you expended in the exchange; give back what isn't yours."

"It almost sounds like psychoanalysis."

"You don't analyze, you observe. The filigrees, the detail---you're hooking
yourself to the sorcerers' intent. It's a maneuver, a magical act hundreds of
years old, the key to restoring energy that will free you for other things."

"You move your head and breathe---"

"Go down the list until you get to mommy and daddy. By then you'll be
shocked; you'll see patterns of repetition that will nauseate you. Who is
sponsoring your insanity's? Who is making the agenda? The recapitulation will
give you a moment of silence---it will allow you to vacate the premises and
make room for something else. From the recapitulation you come up with
endless tales of the Self, but you are no longer bleeding."

EVERYTHING YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT ENERGY.. BUT WERE AFRAID TO
ASK

When I came to don Juan, I was already fucked to death; I'd exhausted myself
that way. I'm not in the world anymore, not like that; sorcerers use that kind
of energy to fly off, or to change. Fucking is our most important act,
energetically. See, we've dispersed our best generals but don't try to call them
back; we lose by default. That's why it's so important to recapitulate your life.

The recapitulation separates our commitment to the social order from our life

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force. The two are not inextricable. Once I was able to subtract the social
being from my native energy, I could clearly see: I wasn't that "sexy."

Sometimes I talk to groups of psychiatrists. They want to know about the

orgasm. When you're out there flying in the immensity's, you don't give a shit
about the "Big O." Most of us are frigid; all this sensuality is mental
masturbation. We are "bored fucks"---no energy at the moment of conception.
Either we're first born and the parents didn't know how to do it, or last born
and they're not interested anymore. We're fucked either way. We're just
biological meat with bad habits and no energy. We are boring creatures, but
instead we say, "I'm so bored."

Fucking is much more injurious for women ---men are drones. The universe is
female. Women have total access, they're already there. It's just they're so
stupidly socialized. Women are portentous fliers; they have a second brain, an
organ they can use for unimaginable flight. They use their wombs for
dreaming.

Do we have to stop fucking? The men ask Florinda that. She says, "Go ahead!
Stick your little pee-pee wherever you want! " Oh, she's a horrible witch! She's
worse with the women--- the weekend goddesses who paint their nipples and
go on retreats. She says, "Yes, you're here being goddesses. But what do you
do when you get home? You get fucked, like slaves! The men leave luminous
worms in your pussy!"

A truly terrible witch!

THE COYOTE TRAIL

Florinda Donner-Grau takes no prisoners. She is small-boned, charming, and

aggressive--- like a jockey with a shiv.

When Donner-Grau first encountered don Juan and his circle, she thought they
were unemployed circus workers who trafficked in stolen goods. How else to
explain the Baccarat crystal, the exquisite clothes, the antiquarian jewelry? She
felt adventurous around them--- by nature she was cocky, daring, vivacious.
For a South American girl, her life had been freewheeling.

"I thought I was the most wonderful being who ever was---so bold, so special.
I raced cars and dressed like a man. Then this old Indian said the only thing
'special' about me was my blonde hair and blue eyes in a country where those
things were revered. I wanted to strike him---in fact, I think I did. But he was
right, you know. This celebration of Self is totally insane. What the sorcerers
do is kill the Self. You must die, in that sense, in order to live---not live in
order to die."

Don Juan encouraged his students to have a "romance with knowledge." He

wanted their minds sufficiently trained to view sorcery as an authentic
philosophical system; in a delicious reversal distinctive to the sorcerer's world,
fieldwork led to academia. The road to magic hour was funny that way.

She recalled the first time Castaneda took her to Mexico to see Don Juan. "We
went via this long, snaky route---you know, the 'coyote trail.' I thought he was
taking a weird route so we wouldn't be followed, but it was something else.
You had to have enough energy to find that old Indian. After I don't know how
long, there was someone on the road waving us in. I said to Carlos, 'Hey,

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aren't you going to stop?' He said, 'It isn't necessary.' See, we had crossed
over the fog. "

We rocketed past Pepperdine. Someone was selling crystals by the road. I

wondered if Shirley MacLaine's house had burned; I wondered if Dick Van Dyke
had rebuilt. Maybe Van Dyke had moved into MacLaine's with the Sean Penns.

"What happens with people who are interested in your work---the ones who
read your books and write letters? Do you help them?"

"People are intellectually curious, they're 'teased' or whatever. They stay until
it gets too difficult. The recapitulation is very unpleasant; they want immediate
results, instant gratification. For a lot of the New Agers, it's The Dating Game.
They case the room---furtive, prolonged eye contact with potential partners. Or
it's just shopping on Montana Avenue. When the thing becomes too expensive
in terms of what they have to give of themselves, they don't want to pursue it.
You see, we want minimal investment with maximal return. No one is really
interested in doing the work."

"But they would be interested, if there was some kind of proof what you're
saying---"

"Carlos has a great story. There was a woman he'd known for years. She called
from Europe, in terrible shape. He said come to Mexico---you know, 'jump into
my world.' She hesitated. Then she said, 'I'll come---as long as I know my
huaraches are waiting on the other side of the river.' She wanted guarantees
she'd land on her feet. Of course, there are no guarantees. We're all like that:
We will jump, as long as we know our huaraches are waiting for us on the
other side."

"What if you jump---as best you can---and it turns out it was only a fever
dream?"

"Then have a good fever."

CARLOS CASTANEDA'S PRIVATE PARTS

This is not a book for people.

That's what someone who has known him for years said about The Art of
Dreaming. In fact, it is the crown of Castaneda's work, an instruction manual
to an undiscovered country---the delineation of ancient techniques used by
sorcerers to enter the second attention. Like his other books, it's lucid and
unnerving, yet there's something haunting about this one. It smells like it was
made somewhere else. I was curious how it all began.

"I used to take notes, with don Juan---thousands of notes. Finally, he said,
'Why don't you write a book?' I told him that was impossible. 'I'm not a writer.
"But you could write a shitty book, couldn't you?' I thought to myself, Yes! I
could write a shitty book. Don Juan laid down a challenge: 'Can you write this
book, knowing it may bring notoriety? Can you remain impeccable? If they love
you or hate you is meaningless. Can you write this book and not give in to
what may come your way?' I agreed. Yes. I'll do it.

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"And terrifying things came my way. But the panties didn't fit."

I told him I wasn't sure about the last remark, and he laughed.

"That's an old joke. A woman's car breaks down and a man repairs it. She has
no money and offers him earrings. He tells her his wife wouldn't believe him.
She offers her watch but he tells her bandits will steal it. Finally, she takes off
her panties to give him. 'No, please,' he says. 'They're not my size.'"

THE CRITERIA FOR BEING DEAD

I had never been alone until I met don Juan. He said, "Get rid of your friends.
They will never allow you to act with independence--- they know you too well.
You will never be able to come from left field with something. ..shattering."
Don Juan told me to rent a room, the more sordid the better. Something with
green floors and green curtains that reeked of piss and cigarettes. "Stay
there," he said. "Be alone until you are dead." I told him I couldn't do it. I
didn't want to leave my friends. He said, "Well, I can't talk to you ever again."
He waved goodbye, big smile. Boy, was I relieved! This weird old man---this
Indian---had thrown me out. The whole thing had tied itself up so neatly. The
closer I got to L.A., the more desperate I became. I realized what I was going
home to---my "friends." And for what? To have meaningless dialogue with
those who knew me so well. To sit on the couch by the phone waiting to be
invited to a party. Endless repetition. I went to the green room and called don
Juan. "Hey, not that I'm going to do it--- but tell me, what is the criteria for
being dead?" "When you no longer care whether you have company or
whether you are alone. That is the criteria for being dead."

It took three months to be dead. I climbed the walls desperate for a friend to
drop by. But I stayed. By the end, I'd gotten rid of assumptions; you don't go
crazy being alone. You go crazy the way you're going, that's for sure. You can
count on it.

ASSEMBLING AWARENESS

We headed in his station wagon toward the cheap apartment house where
Castaneda went to die.

"We could go to your old room," I said, "and knock on the door. For the hell of
it." He said that might be taking things too far.

"'What do you want out of life?' That's what Don Juan used to ask me. My
classic response 'Frankly, Don Juan, I don't know.' That was my pose as the
'thoughtful' man--- the intellectual. Don Juan said, 'That answer would satisfy
your mother, not me.' See, I couldn't think---I was bankrupt. And he was an
Indian. Carajo, cono! God, you don't know what that means. I was polite, but I
looked down on him. One day he asked if we were equals. Tears sprang to my
eyes as I threw my arms around him. 'Of course we're equals, don Juan! How
could you say such a thing!' Big hug; I was practically weeping. 'You really
mean it?' he said. 'Yes, by God!' When I stopped hugging him he said, 'No, we
are not equals. I am an impeccable warrior---and you are an asshole. I could
sum up my whole life in a moment. You cannot even think." We pulled over
and parked underneath some trees. Castaneda stared at the seedy building
with an odd ebullience, shocked it was still there. He said it should have been
torn down long ago---that its perseverance in the world was some kind of

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weird magic. Children were playing with a giant plastic fire engine. A homeless
woman drifted past like a somnambulist. He made no move to get out. He
began talking about what "dying in that green room" meant. By the time he
left that place, Castaneda was finally able to listen unjaundiced to the old
Indian's far-out premises.

Don Juan told him that when sorcerers see energy, the human form presents
itself as a luminous egg. Behind the egg---roughly an arm's length from the
shoulders---is the "assemblage point," where incandescent strands of
awareness are gathered. The way we perceive the world is determined by the
point's position. The assemblage point of mankind is fixed at the same point on
each egg; such uniformity accounts for our shared view of everyday life.
(Sorcerers call this arena of awareness "the first attention.") Our way of
perceiving changes with the point's displacement by injury, shock, drugs---or
in sleep, when we dream. "The art of dreaming" is to displace and fix the
assemblage point in a new position, engendering the perception of alternate,
all-inclusive worlds ("the second attention"). Smaller shifts of the point within
the egg are still inside the human band and account for the hallucinations of
delirium ---or the world encountered during dreams. Larger movements of the
assemblage point, more dramatic, pull the "energy body" outside the human
band to nonhuman realms. That is where don Juan and his party journeyed in
1973 when they "burned from within," fulfilling the unthinkable assertion of his
lineage: evolutionary flight.

Castaneda learned that whole civilizations---a conglomerate of dreamers---had

vanished in the same way.

He told me about a sorcerer of his lineage who had tuberculosis---and was able
to shift his assemblage point away from death. That sorcerer had to remain
impeccable; his illness hung over him like a sword. He could not afford an ego-
--he knew precisely where his death lay, waiting for him.

Castaneda turned to me, smiling. "Hey . . ."

He had a strangely effusive look, and I was ready. For three weeks I'd been
awash in his books and their contagious presentation of possibilities. Perhaps
this was the moment in which I'd make my pact with Mescalito. Or had we
already "crossed over the fog" without my knowing?

"Hey," he said again, his eyes fairly twinkling. "Do you want to get a
hamburger?"

BOYCOTTING THE PAGEANT

"That the assemblage point of man is fixed in one position is a crime."

I sat with Taisha Abelar on a bench in front of the art museum on Wilshire. She
didn't sync up with my image of her. Castaneda said that as part of Abelar's
training, she'd assumed different personas---one being the "Madwoman of
Oaxaca," a lecherous, mud---smeared beggar woman---back in her days as a
struggling actress in Sorcery Action Theater.

"I was going to call my book The Great Crossing but I thought that was too
Eastern." "The Buddhist concept is pretty similar."

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"There are lots of parallels. Our group has been crossing over for years but
only recently have we compared notes---because our leaving is imminent.
Seventy-five percent of our energy is there, 25 percent here. That's why we
have to go."

"Is that where Carol Tiggs was? That 75 percent place?"

"You mean the Twilight Zone?"

She waited a deadpan beat, then laughed.

"We felt Carol Tiggs on our bodies when she was gone. She had tremendous
mass. She was like a lighthouse; a beacon. She gave us hope---an incentive to
go on. Because we knew she was there. Whenever I would become self-
indulgent, I felt her tap me on the shoulder. She was our magnificent
obsession."

"Why is it so difficult for the 'ape' to make his journey?"

"We perceive minimally; the more entanglements we have in this world, the
harder it is to say goodbye. And we all have them---we all want fame, we want
to be loved, to be liked. My gosh, some of us have children. Why would anyone
want to leave? We wear a hood, cloaked . . . we have our happy moments that
last us the rest of our lives. I know someone who was Miss Alabama. Is that
enough to keep her from freedom? Yes. 'Miss Alabama' is enough to pin her
down."

It was time to pose one of the Large Questions (there were a number of
them): When they spoke of "crossing over," did that mean with their physical
bodies? She replied that changing the Self didn't mean the Freudian ego but
the actual, concrete Self---yes, the physical body. "When don Juan and his
party left," she said, "they went with the totality of their beings. They left with
their boots on."

She said dreaming was the only authentic new realm of philosophical
discourse---that Merleau-Ponty was wrong when he said mankind was
condemned to prejudge an a priori world. "There is a place of no a prioris---the
second attention. Don Juan always said philosophers were 'sorcerers manques.'
What they lacked was the energy to jump beyond their idealities.

"We all carry bags toward freedom: Drop the baggage. We even need to drop
the baggage of sorcery. "

"The baggage of sorcery?"

"We don't do sorcery; we do nothing. All we do is move the assemblage point.

In the end, 'being a sorcerer' will trap you as sure as Miss Alabama."

A shabby, toothless woman shuffled toward us with postcards for sale---the

Madwoman of the Miracle Mile. I picked one and gave her a dollar. I showed it
to Abelar; it was a picture of Jesus, laughing.

"A rare moment," she said.

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THE GUESTS ARRIVE

Where in this world is there left to explore?

It's all a priori---done and exhausted. We are slated for senility; it waits for us
like magina, the river sickness. When I was a boy, I heard of it. A disease of
memories and remembrance. It attacks people who live on the river shore. You
become possessed of a longing that pushes you to move on and on---to roam
without sense, endlessly. The river meanders; people used to say "the river is
alive." When it reverses its course, it never remembers it was once flowing
east to west. The river forgets itself.

There was a woman I used to visit at the convalescent home. She was there
fifteen years. For fifteen years she prepared for a party she was throwing at
the Hotel del Coronado. This was her delusion; she would ready herself each
day but the guests would never come. She finally died. Who knows---maybe
that was the day they finally arrived.

THE INDEX OF INTENT

"How should I say you look?"

His voice became unctuously absurd. He was Fernando Rey, the bourgeois
narcissist---with just a hint of Laurence Harvey.

"You may say I resemble Lee Marvin."

It was dusk in Roxbury Park. There was the steady, distant whomp of a tennis
ball volleying against a concrete backstop.

"I read an article once in Esquire about California witchcraft. The first sentence
went: 'Lee Marvin is scared.' Whenever something is not quite right, you can
hear me: Lee Marvin is scared."

We agreed I would describe Castaneda as wheelchair-bound, with beautifully

'cut' arms and torso. I would say he wore fragrance by Bijan and long hair that
delicately framed a face like the young Foucault.

He began to laugh. "I knew this woman once, she gives seminars now on
Castaneda. When she felt depressed, she had a trick---a way to get out of it.
She'd say to herself: 'Carlos Castaneda looks like a Mexican waiter' This is all it
took to pull her up. Carlos Castaneda looks like a Mexican waiter!---instantly
refreshed. Fascinating! How sad. But for her, it was good as Prozac! "

I'd been leafing through the books again and wanted to ask about "intent." It
was one of the most abstract, prevalent concepts of their world. They spoke of
intending freedom, of intending the energy body---they even spoke of
intending intent.

"I don't understand intent."

"You don't understand anything." I was taken aback. "None of us do! We don't
understand the world, we merely handle it---but we handle it beautifully. So
when you say 'I don't understand,' that's just a slogan. You never understood
anything to begin with."

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I was feeling argumentative. Even sorcery had a "working definition." Why

couldn't he give one for "intent"?

"I cannot tell you what intent is. I don't know myself. Just make it a new
indexical category. We are taxonomists---how we love to keep indexes! Once,
don Juan asked me: 'What is a university?' I told him it was a school for higher
learning. He said, 'But what is a "school for higher learning"?' I told him it was
a place where people met to learn. 'A park? A field?' He got me. I realized that
'university' had a different meaning for the taxpayer, for the teacher, for the
student. We have no idea what 'university' is! It's an indexical category, like
'mountain' or 'honor.' You don't need to know what 'honor' is to move toward
it. So move toward intent. Make intent an index. Intent is merely the
awareness of a possibility---of a chance to have a chance. It's one of the
perennial forces in the universe that we never call on---by hooking onto the
intent of the sorcerer's world, you're giving yourself a chance to have a chance.
You're not hooking onto the world of your father, the world of being buried six
feet under. Intend to move your assemblage point. How? By intending! Pure
sorcery."

"Move toward it, without understanding."

"Certainly! 'Intent' is just an index---most fallacious, but utterly utilizable. Just

like 'Lee Marvin is scared."'

POOR BABYISM

I meet people all the time who are dying to tell me their tales of sexual abuse.
One guy told me when he was ten, his father grabbed his cock and said, "This
is for fucking!" That traumatized him for ten years! He spent thousands on
psychoanalysis. Are we that vulnerable? Bullshit. We've been around five
billion years! But that defines him: He is a "sexual abuse victim." Mierda.

We are all poor babies.

Don Juan forced me to examine how I related to people wanted them to feel
sorry for me. That was my "one trick." We have one trick that we learn early
on and repeat until we die. If we are very imaginative, we have two. Turn on
the television and listen to the talk shows: poor babies to the end.

We love Jesus---bleeding, nailed to the cross. That's our symbol. No one's

interested in the Christ who was resurrected and ascended to Heaven. We
want to be martyrs, losers; we don't want to succeed. Poor babies, praying to
the poor baby. When Man fell to his knees, he became the asshole he is today.

CONFESSIONS OF AN AWARENESS ADDICT

Castaneda has long eschewed psychotropic drugs, yet they were an enormous
part of his initiation into the nagual's world. I asked what that was about.

"Being male, I was very rigid---my assemblage point was immovable. Don
Juan was running out of time, so he employed desperate measures.

"That's why he gave you the drugs? To dislodge your assemblage point?"

He nodded. "But with drugs, there's no control; it moves helter-skelter."

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"Does that mean the time came when you were able to shift your assemblage
point and dream without the use of drugs?"

"Certainly! That was don Juan's doing. You see, Juan Matus didn't give a fuck
about 'Carlos Castaneda'. He was interested in that other being, the energy
body ---what sorcerers call "the double". That's what he wanted to awaken.
You use your Double to dream, to navigate in the second attention. That's what
pulls you to freedom. 'I trust that the Double will do its duty,' he said. 'I will do
anything for it---to help it awaken.' I got chills. These people were for real.
They did not die crying for their mommies. Crying for pussy."

We were at a little cafe in the middle of the Santa Monica Airport. I went to the
bright bathroom to wet my face and take it all in. I stared in the mirror and
thought about the Double. I remembered something don Juan told Castaneda
in The Art of Dreaming. "Your passion," he said , "is to jump without
capriciousness or premeditation to cut someone else's chains."

On the way back, I formed a question.

"What was it like---I mean, the first time you shifted your assemblage point
without drugs?"

He paused for a moment, then moved his head from side to side.

"Lee Marvin was very scared!" He laughed. "Once you start breaking the
barriers of normal, historical perception, you believe you are insane. You need
the nagual then, simply to laugh. He laughs your fears away."

THE PLUMED SERPENT

I saw them go---don Juan and his group, a whole flock of sorcerers. They went
to a place free from humanness and the compulsive worshipping of man. They
burned from within. They made a movement as they went, they call it the
"plumed serpent." They became energy; even their shoes. They made one last
turn, one pass, to see this exquisite world for the last time. Ooh-woo-woo! I
get chills---I shake. One last turn . . . for my eyes only.

I could have gone with him. When don Juan left he said, "It takes all my guts
to go. I need all my courage, all my hope---no expectations. To stay behind,
you will need all your hope and all your courage." I took a beautiful jump into
the abyss and woke up in my office, near Tiny Naylor's. I interrupted the flow
of psychological continuity: Whatever woke up in that office could not be the
"me" that I knew linearly. That's why I'm the nagual.

The nagual is a nonentity---not a person. In place of the ego is something else,

something very old. Something observant, detached--- and infinitely less
committed to the Self. A man with an ego is driven by psychological desires.
The nagual has none. He receives orders from some ineffable source that
cannot be discussed. That's the final understanding: The nagual, in the end,
becomes a tale, a story. He cannot be offended, jealous, possessive---he can't
be anything. But he can tell tales of jealousy and passion.

The only thing the nagual fears is "ontological sadness." Not nostalgia for the
good old days---that's egomania. Ontological sadness is something different.
There's a perennial force that exists in the universe, like gravity, and the
nagual feels it. It's not a psychological state. It is a confluence of forces that

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unite to clobber this poor microbe who has vanquished his ego. It is felt when
there are no longer any attachments. You see it coming, then you feel it on top
of you.

THE LONELINESS OF THE LONG-DISTANCE REPLICANT

He used to love the movies, 10,000 years ago. Back when they showed all-
nighters at the Vista in Hollywood, back when he was learning the criteria for
being dead. He doesn't go anymore, but the witches still do. It's a diversion
from their freakish, epic activities---sort of like safe-sex dreaming. But not
really.

"You know, there's a scene in Blade Runner that really got to us. The writer
doesn't know what he's saying, but he hit something. The replicant is talking at
the end: 'My eyes have seen inconceivable things.' He's talking about the
constellations---'I have seen attack ships off of Orion'---nonsense, inanities.
That was the only flaw for us, because the writer hasn't seen anything. But
then the speech becomes beautiful. It's raining and the replicant says, 'What if
all those moments will be lost in time . . .like tears in the rain?'

"This is a very serious question for us. They may be just tears in the rain---
yes. But you do your best, sir. You do your best and if your best isn't good
enough, then fuck it. If your best isn't good enough, fuck God himself."

A FOOTNOTE TO FEMINISTS

Before I met him a final time, I was scheduled to see the mysterious Carol
Tiggs for breakfast. Twenty years before, she had "jumped" with don Juan
Matus's party into the unknown. Unimaginably, she had returned, somehow
triggering a veritable road show of sorcerers. I was feeling more and more
uneasy about our pending appointment. Each time the Large Question loomed
("Where the hell were you those ten years? " ), it evanesced . I felt like I was
on the tracks; Carol Tiggs was waving from the caboose.

In a universe of dualities, Tiggs and Castaneda are energetic counterparts.

They are not in the world together as man and wife. They have "double"
energy; to a seer, their energetic bodies would appear as two luminous eggs
instead of one. This doesn't make them "better" than Donner-Grau or Abelar or
anyone---on the contrary. It gave them the predilection, as Juan Matus once
said, to be "twice the asshole." Until now, Castaneda wrote exclusively about
don Juan's world, never his own. But The Art of Dreaming is suffused with
Carol Tiggs's dark, extraneous presence---and rife with hair-raising accounts of
their excursions into the second attention, including the precipitous rescue of a
"sentient being from another dimension" who takes the form of an angular,
steely-eyed little girl called the Blue Scout.

I was just about to leave when the phone rang. I was sure it was Tiggs, calling
to cancel. It was Donner-Grau.

I told her a dream I had that morning. I was with Castaneda in a gift shop
called the Coyote Trail. She didn't care! She said normal dreams were just
"meaningless masturbations." Cruel, heartless witch.

"I wanted to add something. People say to me, 'Here you are putting feminism

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down... the "leader" of this group was Juan Matus and now the new nagual is
Carlos Castaneda---why is it always a male?' Well, the reason those males
were 'leaders' was a matter of energy---not because they knew more or were
'better.' See, the universe truly is female; the male is pampered because he is
unique. Carlos guides us not in what we do in the world, but in dreaming.

"Don Juan had this horrible phrase. He used to say women are 'cracked cunts'-
--he wasn't being derogatory. It's precisely because we are 'cracked' that we
have the facility for dreaming. Males are rigid through and through. But women
have no sobriety, no structure, no context; in sorcery, that's what the male
provides. The feminists become enraged when I say females are inherently
complacent, but it's true! That's because we receive knowledge directly. We
don't have to endlessly talk about it---that's the male process.

"Do you know what the nagual is? The myth of the nagual? That there are
unlimited possibilities for all of us to be something else than what we are
meant to be. You don't have to follow the route of your parents. Whether I'm
going to succeed or not is immaterial."

FOR YOUR EYES ONLY

Just after I hung up, the phone rang again. Carol Tiggs was calling to cancel. I
expected to feel relief but it was a bringdown.

I'd spoken to people who had seen her lecture in Maui and Arizona. They said
she was gorgeous; that she worked the room like a stand-up; that she did a
mean Elvis. "I'm sorry we can't meet," she said. At least she sounded genuine.
"I was looking forward to it."

"It's okay. I'll catch up with you at one of your lectures."

"Oh, I don't think I'll be doing that again for a while." There was a pause. "I
have something for you."

"Is it the lightning from your tits?"

She hesitated a moment then broke into peals of laughter.

"Something much more dramatic." I felt a tug at the pit of my stomach. "You
know, they always said people have this split between mind and body---this
imbalance, this 'mindbody problem.' But the real dichotomy is between
physical body and energy body. We die without having ever awakened that
magical Double, and it hates us for that. It hates us so much it eventually kills
us. That's the whole 'secret' of sorcery: accessing the Double for abstract
flight. Sorcerers jump into the void of pure perception with their energy body."

Another pause. I wondered if that was all she was going to say. I was about to
speak but something held my words in check.

"There's a song that don Juan thought was beautiful---he said the lyricist
nearly got it right. Don Juan substituted one word to make it perfect. He put in
freedom where the songwriter had written love."

Then the ghostly recitation began:

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You only live twice

Or so it seems.
One life for yourself
And one for your dreams.
You drift through the years
And life seems tame.
'Til one dream appears
And Freedom is its name.
And Freedom's a stranger
Who'll beckon you on
Don't think of the danger
Or the stranger is gone.
This dream is for you
So pay the price.
Make one dream come true. . . *

* From "You Only Live Twice" by John Barry and Leslie Bricusse

She held back in silence a moment.

Then she said "Sweet dreams," parodied a witchy cackle, and hung up.

ITCH OF THE NAGUAL

As the days became chillier it was easy to feel regret---about anything, even
Prozac. What if it turns out Castaneda is inventing nothing? If that's true, then
you are in a very bad spot.

We met for the last time on a cold day at the beach, by the pier. He said he
couldn't stay long. He was sorry I wasn't able to meet Carol Tiggs. Some
other time. I felt much the poor baby---Damnit, I just want to be loved. I
was scared as Lee Marvin; I was Rutger Hauer with a tin cup; a shrieking
Miracle Mile Jesus.

And Jesus looked down on all the people and said: I'm so bored.

We sat down on one of the benches on the bluff. I wanted to detain him, just
for a moment. "Tell me the last time you felt nostalgia."

He answered without hesitation.

"When I had to say goodbye to my grandfather. He was long dead by then.

Don Juan told me it was time to say goodbye: I was preparing for a long
journey, no return. You have to say goodbye, he said, because you will never
come back. I conjured my grandfather in front of me---saw him in perfect
detail. A total vision of him. He had 'dancing eyes.' Don Juan said, 'Make your
goodbye forever.' Oh, the anguish! It was time to drop the banner, and I did.
My grandfather became a story. I've told it thousands of times."

We walked to his car.

"I feel an itch in my solar plexus---very exciting. I remember don Juan used to
feel that, but I didn't understand what it meant. It means it will soon be time
to go." He shivered with delight. "How exquisite!" As he drove off, he shouted

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at me through the window: Goodbye, illustrious gentleman!

THE DIMMING OF THE LIGHTS

I heard about a lecture in San Francisco. I was finished writing about them but
decided to drive up. To put a cork in it, so to speak.

The auditorium was in an industrial park in Silicon Valley. His plane was late;
when he walked in, the hall was filled. He spoke eloquently for three hours
without a break. He answered questions with incitements, solicitations, and
parries. No one moved.

At the end, he talked about killing the ego. Don Juan had a metaphor: " 'The
lights are dimming, the musicians packing away their instruments. There is no
more time for dancing: It is time to die.' Juan Matus said there was endless
time, and no time at all---the contradiction is sorcery. Live it! Live it
gorgeously.

"A young man rose from the audience.

"But how can we do this without someone like don Juan? How can we do it
without joining---"

"No one 'joins' us. There are no gurus. You don't need don Juan," he said
emphatically. "I needed him---so I can explain it to you. If you want freedom,
you need decision. We need mass in the world; we don't want to be
masturbators. If you recapitulate, you'll gather the energy---we will find you.
But you need a lot of energy. And for that, you have to work your balls off. So,
suspend your judgment and take the option. Do it.

"Don Juan used to say, 'One of us is an asshole. And it isn't me.'" He paused a
beat. "That's what I came to tell you today."

Everyone roared with laughter and rose in applause as Castaneda left through
the back door.

I WANTED TO CHASE HIM DOWN, SCREAMING

Please love me! That would have been good for a laugh, anyway. But I forgot
my tin cup.

I walked the sidewalk edges of the pond in darkness. A light wind scattered the
brittle leaves on its border. One of our conversations came back---he'd been
talking about love. I heard his voice and imagined myself on the caboose,
slowly turning to face the words as they advanced...

"I fell in love when I was nine years old. Truly, I found my other Self. Truly.
But it was not fated. Don Juan told me I would have been static, immobile. My
fate was dynamic. One day, the love of my life---this nine-year old girl!---
moved away. My grandmother said, 'Don't be a coward! Go after her!' I loved
my grandmother but never told her, because she embarrassed me---she had a
speech impediment. She called me 'afor' instead of 'amor.' It was really just a
foreign accent, but I was very young, I didn't know. My grandmother put a
bunch of coins in my hand. 'Go and get her! We'll hide her and I'll raise her!' I
took the money and started to go. Just then, my grandmother's lover
whispered something in her ear. She turned to me with an empty look. 'Afor,'

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 25

she said, 'afor, my precious darling . . .' and she took the money back. 'I am
sorry, but we have just run out of time.' And I forgot about it---it took don
Juan to put it together, years later.

"It haunts me. When I feel the itch---and the clock says quarter to twelve---I
get chills! I shake, to this day!"

" 'Afor . . . my darling. We have just run out of time.' "

End of Article

http://www.FourYogas.com Guide To Don Juan’s Nagualism & Esoteric Buddhism

T H E F O U R YO G A S
OF

ENLIGHTENMENT
GUIDE TO DON JUAN’S NAGUALISM
& ESOTERIC BUDDHISM

EDWARD
PLOTKIN
 THE FOUR YOGAS
OF
ENLIGHTENMENT ©
GUIDE TO DON JUAN'S NAGUALISM
& ESOTERIC BUDDHISM

EDWARD
PLOTKIN

The Four Yogas Of Enlightenment: Guide To Don Juan's Nagualism & Esoteric
Buddhism, copyright 2005 Edward Plotkin; All Rights Reserved. Perpetual
copyright claimed. No part of this document may be reproduced in any form
without the express permission of the author. Additional copies may be
purchased at:
http://www.FourYogas.com

Reaching the author:

Edward Plotkin can be reached at info@FourYogas.com. Please direct your e-mail
mentioning The Four Yogas in the subject line.

Mailing address:
Edward Plotkin
FourYogas.com
318 Main Street
Madison, NJ 07940-2355
CONTENTS

1. THE MASTERY OF AWARENESS 11

Stopping the World 11

Reconstructing Enlightenment 14

Transcending the Dust of Time and Knowledge 15

The Mastery of Transcendental Awareness 16

2. RADICAL SANITY 18
The Spirit of Enlightenment 18

Examining Love 27

Adi Da – The Wound Of Love 28

Examining Consciousness 31

Search For Sanity 33

Ken Wilber – The Primary Dualism 35

Adi Da – Self-Radiant Consciousness 37

3. THE HEART 40
The Kingdom Of Kashmir 40

Abhinavagupta – The Heart Of Bhairava 40

Adi Da – The Way Of The Heart 40

Kashmir Shaivism – Thirty Six Elements 42

Mark Dyczkowski – Shiva and Shakti 44

Hua-Yen Buddhism – The Stainless Mirror 45

Siva – The Lord Of Dance 46

Ksemaraja – The Heart Of Recognition 47

Geshe Rinpoche – The Black Tara 47

Lilian Silburn – Lalla, Kashmiri Poetess 48

4. THE NATURE OF CONSCIOUSNESS 51

Dependent Arising and Emptiness 51

Nagarjuna – Dependent Arising 51

Gadjin Nagao – Ultimate Meaning 53

 Don Juan – Not-doing 54

5. THE NATURE OF THE SELF 57

Bhavanakrama – Manifestations Of Mind 57

Nagarjuna – Valid Relative Phenomena 58

Don Juan – The Mirror Of Self-Reflection 58

Donald Williams – Disintegration Of Awareness 61

Mahamudra – Nondual Awareness 63

6. TRANSCENDING THE DUST OF KNOWLEDGE 65

Seeking Illumination 65

Don Juan – The Assemblage Point 66

Transcending the Dust Of Time 67

7. EXPLORING DREAMTIME 73
The Dream Body 73

Don Juan – Dreaming 73

Don Juan – Death And The Ticket To Freedom 74

Adi Da – Death Of The Self 75

Don Juan – Facing A New Direction 75

Donald Williams – The Mandala 76

Don Juan – Losing the Human Form 78

The Ally 79

Archetypes – Tara and The Black Madonna 80

8. THE PURPOSE OF MEDITATION 82

Metamorphosis 82

Tranquility 83

Adi Da – Thinking Is A Way In, Not A Way Out 84

Conditions Necessary For Mastering Tranquility 85

Physical Position and Behavior 85

Bhagawan Rajneesh – Mirror Meditation 87

Counting The Breath Meditation 88

The Nine Stages of Mental Abiding 88

One: Settling The Mind 88

 Two: Maintaining Concentration 88

Three: Revitalizing The Concentration 89

Four: Firmly Settled Concentration 89

Five: Mastery Of Concentration 89

Six: Pacification Of Excitement 90

Seven: Total Pacification Of Mental Stains 90

Eight: One-Pointed Concentration 90

Nine: Settling In Tranquil Equipoise 90

Recognizing Flawless Meditation 91

Requirements For Mastering Tranquility 92

9. MEDITATION ON THE SELF 94

Don Juan – Stopping The World 94

Hubert Benoit – The Zen Of Mind 94

Ken Wilber – Unity Of Life And Death 95

Don Juan – Losing The Human Form 95

Nagarjuna – Self-Nature 96

The Ajna Door – Crack Between The Worlds 99

Beyond The Ajna Door 100

10. INSIGHT 104

Conceptual Designations 104

Examining The Mind 107

Gampopa – Mind's Manifestations 109

The Nature Of Time-Space and Sanity 110

Search For The Mind 114

Jigmed Lingpa – The Nature Of Mind 115

The Essence Of Mind 117

The Characteristics Of Mind 118

Adi Da – The Nature Of Consciousness 121

11. REALIZATION OF THE FOUR YOGAS 122

The Heart Of Consciousness 122
12. THE FIRST YOGA 127
Savikalpa Samadhi – Adi Da 127

Don Juan – Luminous Being 129

Mahamudra – The One-Pointed Yoga 130

Longchen Rabjam – Dzogpa Chenpo 131

Hua-Yen School – No Thought 131

Savikalpa Samadhi – Cosmic Consciousness 131

Mahamudra – Je Gayre 132

Longchen Rabjam – Dzogpa Chenpo 133

Don Juan – Losing The Human Form 133

Hua-Yen School – Voidness Of Person 134

Adi Da – Ego Death 134

13. THE SECOND YOGA 135

Mahamudra – The Nondiscriminatory Yoga 135

Don Juan – Seeing Of A Man Of Knowledge 136

Ksemaraja – Kashmir Shaivism 138

Don Juan – Silent Knowledge 138

Hua-Yen School – Fa-tsang 139

Adi Da – Conditional Nirvikalpa Samadhi 139

Adi Da – Witness-Consciousness 140

Stains On The Second Yoga 141

14. THE THIRD YOGA 143

Mahamudra – Yoga Of One Flavor 143

Jesus – Gospel of Thomas 143

Don Juan – Dreaming 144

Je Lingrepa – Mahamudra 145

Dzogpa Chenpo – Dakini Dream 146

Hua-Yen School – Light Without Thought 148

Longchen Rabjam – Dzogpa Chenpo 148

Adi Da – Aham Sphurana 149

Adi Da – Jnana Samadhi 149

 Stains On The Third Yoga 150

15. THE FOURTH YOGA 152

Mahamudra – The Nonmeditation Yoga 152

Mahamudra – Great Seal 152

Mahamudra – Enlightenment Of Dharmakaya 152

Don Juan – The Third Point Of Reference 154

Adi Da – Transcending The Cosmic Mandala 156

Hua-Yen Buddhism – Formless Cessation 157

The Flower Ornament Scripture – Buddha Flower Array 157

The Lankavatara Sutra – Noble Wisdom 158

The Lankavatara Sutra – Perfect Love of Nirvana 158

Shingta Chenpo – The Ultimate Body 159

Dzogpa Chenpo – Primordial Wisdoms 161

Adi Da – Sahaj Samadhi 163

Adi Da – Moksha-Bhava Samadhi 168

EPILOGUE 170

BIBLIOGRAPHY 172

INDEX TO THE FOUR YOGAS OF ENLIGHTENMENT 176

NOTES 185
 CHAPTER 1 - THE MASTERY OF AWARENESS

Stopping the World

On a day forever etched in m y m emory I unexpectedly discovered the extraordinary teachings of

the Yaqui Indian seer, don J uan. While looking for som ething new and interesting to read, I had
unknowingly stum bled upon a treasure trove of m ystic lore and esoteric knowledge. After a few
weeks of studying don J uan's teachings I becam e m esm erized by the wise old Indian's words. I
slowly began to discover that don J uan was a m agnificent w arrior and m an of know ledge. His
m ysterious teachings revealed a path to the m astery of awareness. I had been com pletely unaware
that m an had access to higher states of consciousness or that a path through the m astery of aware-
ness to enlightened being existed. Having had little or no interest in the subject of altered states of
awareness, it seem ed unlikely that m y personal world and interests were about to profoundly
change. During the next few years as I studied don J uan's teachings, as brilliantly expounded in
the writings of his disciple Carlos Castaneda, a num ber of exceptional experiences in non-ordinar y
reality occurred.
The first of these events involved a radical shift and perm anent change in m y perception of the
nature of tim e. The significance of this had far reaching effects, and was an incredible im petus for
the m etamorphosis in consciousness that was about to occur. For if tim e was not the regular linear
expansion that I had always taken for granted, then belief in the absolute nature of my perceived
world and personal self was in jeopardy. My experience can best be described as an im plosion of
awareness wherein the w orld had stopped. As my awareness cam e to an absolute standstill I no-
ticed that as long as m y focus did not m ove off of absolute center that tim e had no duration, m em -
ory was barely a sliver, and that the universe was arising solely and uniquely as a function of m y
perception. A tiny shift in the assem blage

point of awareness brought with it an expansion of both a perceived historical world and personal
self, as well as a heightened realization that the unfolding of these worlds were synchronous with
m ovem ents away from the absolute center of awareness. The world and self could be seen to be
arising as m odifications in consciousness. Once this w itness-position is attained in m editative ab-
sorption, or heightened aw areness, these m ovements of the assem blage point of awareness are
seen to be non-binding m odifications in consciousness, and without duration or lasting relation-
ship to the "I" at the center of perception. A seer, or don J uan would see this as being the tim e of
the double.

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Guide To Don Juan’s Nagualism Edwar d Plot k in
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 2

Once it has learned to dream the double, the self arrives at this weird crossroad and a
m om ent com es when he realizes that it is the double who dream s the self.
Tales Of Pow er, Carlos Castaneda

Later, I learned that this event was a glim pse at the first of the four yogas, the one-pointed yoga or
cosm ic consciousness. This was followed during subsequent years by a series of alterations and ex-
pansions running through the range of all of m y senses, and a journey in consciousness through each
of the four yogas and the psychological form ation and integration of the self. My internship in th e
m editative exploration of tim e, self, and the very nature of reality itself had begun in earnest.

The various teachings presented in this book have been accessed and assim ilated while in m editative
absorption, or in don J uan's term inology heightened aw areness. Learning to stop the w orld, bring-
ing cohesiveness to m ovem ents of the assem blage point through discerning w isdom , and specifically
the transform ation from egoic-self to enlightened Being through the m astery of nondual awareness
are the dom inant them es of The Four Yogas Of Enlightenm ent.

"What happens to the persons whose assemblage points loses rigidity?" I asked. "If
they're not warriors, they think they're losing their m inds."
The Fire From W ithin, Carlos Castaneda

Meditative Synergies

Meditating on the teachings of different m asters and traditions can synergistically enhance height-
ened aw areness. With understanding achieved in m ore than one tradition, cross verification of terms
and states of consciousness can be correlated. Without correlation, progress is exceedingly difficult
because there is no contrasting point of view with which one can glean the intended m eaning, nor a
deeper understanding. The Four Yogas Of Enlightenm ent guides the reader along the m editative
path to enlightenm ent through transcendence of the ego, spir itual awakening, and the stabilization
and m astery of transcendental awareness. This book explores enlightenm ent, the spir itual path to
radical sanity and infinite love, in an inform al but inform ed and accessible m anner.

While every effort has been m ade to m ake The Four Yogas both introductory and progressive,
these teachings can be best accessed by average to advanced students of consciousness exploration
and expansion. Adi Da, a suprem ely enlightened Western born avatar, discusses the issue of exercis-
ing the discrim inative m ind in order to realize the transcendental position of awareness in the intro-
duction to Self-Realization Of Noble W isdom : The Lankavatara Sutra:

It is a kind of "Catch 22" literature. You know that the Truth is ultim ate transcendence
of the discrim inative m ind, but in order to realize the transcendence of the discrim i-
native m ind, you m ust already have realized the transcendence of the discrim inative
m ind!

Nevertheless, let us assum e that we have experienced sufficient transcendence and continue our
quest. The undertaking of the transcendence of egoic m ind is an awesom e but not im possible task.
The beginning of enlightenm ent and the end of self-inflicted neurotic thinking is within the grasp of
anyone willing to learn how to still the discursive m ind and then study the resultant state with full
awareness. In fact, it is not until one has gained sufficient m editative distance from the verbal dim en-
sions of consciousness through m editative silence that one can begin to gauge the neurotic dim en-
sions of egoic m ind.

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Guide To Don Juan’s Nagualism Edwar d Plot k in
& Esot er ic Buddhism
 3

The ideal state to study consciousness is found at the juncture of m editative absorption and discern-
ing awareness, the equivalent to don J uan's heightened aw areness. The journey towards the m astery
of awareness begins by stilling the m ind, while single-pointedly stabilizing the assem blage point in
heightened aw areness, thereby stopping the w orld. At this position in awareness consciousness
studies consciousness itself, revealing the hidden and ultim ate nature of tim e, self, and reality. Th e
apprentice sorcerer while in heightened aw areness and having stopped the w orld clearly sees the in-
ner lum inous path to becom ing a seer and m an or wom an of knowledge.

Inner silence works from the m om ent you begin to accrue it. The desired result is
what the old sorcerers called stopping the w orld, the m om ent when everything
around us ceases to be what it's been.
It is this m om ent when m an the slave becom es m an the free being, capable of feats
of perception that defy our linear im agination.
The Active Side Of Infinity , Carlos Castaneda

Reconstructing Enlightenm ent

The Four Yogas Of Enlightenm ent presents a reconstruction of the stages of awareness leading to
enlightenm ent and leads the reader progressively away from neurotic self-construction through the
union of m editative absorption and discerning awareness. The union of m editative absorption and
discerning awareness is a special state of heightened awareness that is explored and clarified in the
pages of this book and can be viewed as an achievem ent in consciousness arrived at and stabilized
through continued practice in m editative absorption and sim ultaneous study of the teachings of m as-
ter seers.

Although the term inology of various m asters m ay be difficult to access at first, with continued
practice clarity is enhanced, and discerning awareness flowers. Many of the passages m entioned
herein at first seem ed to m e to be im penetrable. However, when assim ilated over tim e, m agnificent
teachings and wondrous states of awareness arced across the sky of m ind, and m y progress was im-
m easurably enhanced.

Perhaps those who do not m editate, or have never experienced altered states of reality, m ay find it
difficult to believe that extraordinary states of awareness and the seed of transform ative growth are
available within consciousness. However not believing, or never having had the experience does not
alter the hidden truth. For exam ple, if you do not speak French you would have to study for some
tim e before you could assim ilate unfam iliar sounds. However, prior to your understanding, it would
not be accurate to deny the existence of m eaning within the French language sim ply because it was
not within your current understanding. There ar e newfound states of consciousness to be grasped,
practiced and finally m astered in m editative absorption, and their existence can only be discovered
and m astered through our own effort.

I've said that the new seers believed that the assem blage point can be m oved from
within. They went one step further and m aintained that im peccable m en need no one
to guide them , that by them selves, through saving their energy, they can do everything
seers do.
The Fire From W ithin, Carlos Castaneda

Transcending the Dust of Tim e and Knowledge

One of the m ajor difficulties the student of heightened aw areness has is to bring a degree of cohe-

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Guide To Don Juan’s Nagualism Edwar d Plot k in
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 4

siveness to the newly found factors in consciousness. For the skilled m editator the requisite cohesive-
ness can be provided by m eans of consciousness studying consciousness from the perspective of a va-
riety of m editation languages. The next stage is com pleted when the tonal and the nagual, or the
egoic and transcendental aspects of awareness are brought into balance and harm ony. Unbending
intent coupled with an open and flexible approach to acquiring and assim ilating seem ingly disparate
teachings are key factors in m aintaining progress along the inner path to transcendental wisdom .

It is in the final stages of yogic awareness that the egoic m ind continues to function and serve th e
needs of the self in the world, however the egoic m ind is no longer in absolute control. The em ergent
m an or wom an of knowledge establishes a new way of being as the giver of knowledge, not the
keeper; the source of love, not the seeker. The inconceivable transform ation-death of old m ind, with
its endless labyrinth-like soliloquies and false pr ojections, is replaced by transcendental m ind. Th e
seed from within has flowered and the path to Self m astery is in view. The guru within, obscured un-
til now by egoic m ind, can proceed along the stages of yogic awareness and developm ent.

My recognition of the necessity of a book organizing and clarifying these teachings cam e about as I
wrestled with understanding yogic knowledge and altered states of awareness. However, it soon be-
cam e apparent that not only is progress slow and difficult to achieve, it is perhaps even more difficult
to speak or write about states of consciousness that are beyond the ordinary realm s of language. I re-
alized that I required either a personal gur u or a m eans of enhancing m y understanding through ex-
panded effort. A relationship with a guru never m aterialized and other and perhaps m ore powerful
m eans of continuing m y education appeared. In retrospect it seem s that when each stage of m y de-
velopm ent in consciousness exploration stabilized a new and m ore powerful teaching becam e avail-
able.

During the m id-eighties the exiled Tibetans began to dissem inate the written teachings of the great
sages of Tibetan Buddhism . The translation of these extraordinary teachings into English was an-
other serendipitous occurrence for m e. J ust as I had reached som e m ajor im passes in m y studies of
don J uan's lessons m any m arvelous Tibetan Buddhist teachings texts becam e available. Of particular
interest were texts illum inating both the gradual and instantaneous path instructions of realized
sages. These teachings revealed a cohesive knowledge and system atic path leading to the attainm ent
of a radically quiescent m ind, and instructive guidance for seeing and analyzing the true and appar-
ent nature of consciousness and reality. I could see striking parallels with the teachings of don J uan,
and realized that I had once again found lessons in the way of the warrior em bodying Self-realized
qualities such as fearlessness, serenity, wisdom , and com passion.

Contem plate the three planes of existence [past, present, and future] as being of m en-
tal origin, since they are designated by the m ind. By analyzing the m ind, the m editator
exam ines the essence of things.
The first Bhavanakram a

"Was it som ething I will see in the future?" I asked. "There's no future!" he exclaim ed
cuttingly. "The future is only a way of talking. For a sorcerer there is only the here and
now."
Tales Of Pow er, Carlos Castaneda

The Mastery of Transcendental Awareness

The Four Yogas Of Enlightenm ent illum inates the sublim ely transcendental stages of awareness of
Tibetan Buddhism . In contrast with Buddhism , I exam ine the way of the warrior, and the m astery of
lum inous awareness as elaborated in the writings of Carlos Castaneda. I have also drawn upon and
revealed the m ystic teachings of the nondual awareness school of Kashm ir Shaivism . In m y final

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Guide To Don Juan’s Nagualism Edwar d Plot k in
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 5

chapters I correlate the most advanced, esoteric, and incom parable states of sam adhic awareness of
the Western avatar and living Buddhist m aster, Adi Da, with the quintessence of don J uan's Nagual-
ism and Chinese and Tibetan Buddhism .

Until The Ajna Door Is Fully Opened (or Otherwise Fully Transcended By Native
Identification With The Witness-Position Of Consciousness), It Is Truly, the Ajna
Knot.
The Daw n Horse Testam ent, Adi Da
The Discipline In the First Stage Of Perfect Practice Is To Stand As Witness-
Consciousness. Second Deep Contem plation Consciousness and Identification With
Itself.
The Daw n Horse Testam ent, Adi Da

That which we in the West consider to be com pleted adult developm ent, is considered by both
Eastern and Western m asters in consciousness to be a state of arrested developm ent. This sam adhi
in four yogas illum inates the stages of awareness leading to enlightenm ent through com parative
analysis and progressive m editative exploration. The transform ation in consciousness which occurs
is nothing less than a m ystical encounter with the spirit, relinquishm ent of the traditional egoic self,
and m etam orphosis into a flexible, highly adapted m an or wom an of knowledge and num inous being.
In the final part of Carlos Castaneda's Tales Of Pow er, don J uan, just prior to revealing the sorcerers'
explanation to his disciple Carlos, prefaces his discussion with these sage comm ents:

Personal power decides who can or cannot profit by a revelation; m y experiences with
m y fellow m en have proven to m e that very, very few of them would be willing to lis-
ten; and of those few who listen even fewer would be willing to act on what they have
listened to; and of those who are willing to act even fewer have enough personal power
to profit by their acts.
Sieze your cubic centim eter of chance with The Four Yogas Of Enlightenm ent. Continue the journey
towards incom parable knowledge and Self m astery.

Begin the journey towards enlightenment

The Four Yogas Of Enlightenment, the next step in learning to stop the world
Begin the journey towards incredible knowledge and Self mastery
with the Guide To don Juan’s Nagualism & Esoteric Buddhism

Table of contents, bibliography, recommended reading list, fully indexed.

THE FOUR YOGAS OF ENLI GHTENMENT ©

Guide To Don Juan's Nagualism & Esoteric Buddhism
Available exclusively at FourYogas.com

Home URL: http://www.FourYogas.com

Email: info@FourYogas.com
Edward Plotkin, Madison NJ
All rights reserved. Perpetual copyright claimed.
© Copyright 2002

The Four Yogas Of Enlight enm ent ht t p: / / www. Four Yogas.com

Guide To Don Juan’s Nagualism Edwar d Plot k in
& Esot er ic Buddhism
The Four Yogas Reader Reviews
Studen ts of Adi Da Sam raj, Hubert Ben oit, Tibetan Buddh ism (Dzogch en an d Mah am udra), Zen Buddhism , Carlos Castan eda, Lam a
Surya Das, Param ah am sa Harih aran an da, Carl J un g, Bokar Rin poch e, J igm e Rin poch e, Kalu Rin poch e, Don Agustin Rivas, Scien tol-
ogy, Ch ögyam Trun gpa, Ken Wilber, Siddh a Yoga (n on dual Sh aivism ), Ten segrity

I am thoroughly enjoying the book you have written, particularly those aspects dealing directly with the sor-
cery techniques of don J uan and their correlation to other esoteric m ethods. It is of course the techniques of
don J uan I am interested in.

I have flirted with other esoteric methods, but it was the force, directness, beauty and profound simplicity of
Castaneda's works which ‘hooked’ me if you will. There is a muscularity and manliness to don J uan's way of
life which I have never sensed in the eastern esoteric m ethods (the obvious exception of course being th e
m artial arts).

For m any years now I have tried to integrate don J uan's teachings into m y life, but your work has been ex-
panding m y intellectual appreciation of these teachings in relation to other esoteric m ethods.

Thank you.

George B. Shaw <istr1655@fox.nstn.ca>

Toronto, Canada

Ext ract f rom East Meet s West - Towar ds a Global Myst icism , by Judy Kennedy.

Dion Fortune: Some day there will come an American who will pick up the ancient Maya contacts, adapt
them to modern needs, and express their forces in an initiatory ritual which shall be valid for the civiliza-
tion to which he belongs.
J udy Kennedy: I've thought long and hard about what she says there, and the first thing that im m ediately
came to mind was the works of Carlos Castaneda. In the past few decades, much research and analysis has
gone into his books; perhaps the most revealing being the work of Edward Plotkin, who has documented the
sim ilarities between the com plex teachings of the Yaqui sorcerer, Don J uan, and the more esoteric tenets of
Tibetan Buddhism , such as Tantra and Dzogchen.

J udy Kennedy <waywardmuse@waywardmuse.com >

Mesa, Arizona

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Guide To Don Juan’s Nagualism Edwar d Plot k in
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 2

I enjoyed visiting your website and found what you had to say in your book about Carlos Castneda, Buddhism ,
and Adi Da to be fascinating and perceptive.

I have attended the public workshops now being given by Carlos Castaneda him self under the aupices of Clear-
green Inc. of Santa Monica, California, and what he teaches there works well together with your book to prove
what you have accom plished.
Leigh Goldstein
Los Angeles, California

Thank you for the great work that you put into The Four Yogas. I'm halfway through, taking it slowly.

What I most appreciate about the work that you have offered is your broad spectrum exposure to vantage from .
Although I have been a student of the works of Carlos Castaneda for about 10 years now, having read and re-
read the series several times, I am more involved with it in mind than in actual transformative practice.

Your writings and exposure to other m asters is now spurring m e into action, into practice of m editation, into
realizing what I m ostly know about only intellectually, what I have been longing for but not sober enough to do.
Thank you again,
Paul Huff
Rainier, Washington

I'm the editor at the Hans-Nietsch-Verlag and just read your book, The Four Yogas Of Enlightenm ent. To say
the least I'm im pressed.

Norbert Classen
Editor in Chief
Hans-Nietsch-Verlag, Germ any

Norbert Classen is the author of Carlos Castaneda und Das Vermächtnis des Don J uan (Carlos Castaneda and
The Legacy of J uan).

Hans-Nietsch-Verlag is the publisher of the Germ an edition of The Five Books Of The Adidam Revelation by
Adi Da Samraj.

Edward Plotkin

First of all I just want to congratulate you on a superb book, beautifully written. Such a refreshing change, writ-
ing that is specific and truthful, as opposed to some of those nebulous books out there that never really do it for
m e!

In the last couple of days, I have noticed a change in m y m editation. My m ind is m aking less effort to interfere
with m y focus, and I have reached a point of consciousness yesterday that I don't think I have ever been to. I
was very calm and did not have to m ake an effort to concentrate.

Your wonderful book provides m e with inspiration everyday. Thank you so much.
Peter Apps
Sao Paulo, Brazil (April 20 00 )

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It happened for the first time today, that experience that it says in your book when you are in a state of
com plete clarity...like a bird flying across the sky1. It felt like I was on the crest of a wave, perfectly bal-
anced not needin g to affirm that thin gs are arising, but just knowin g in an effortless way. It is so sim ple!
Why does it take so lon g to get to this place of natural m ind?

It is like each feeling or sensation, or thought that arrives gets dissolved by the em ptiness. I am
am azed at how incredible it feels to be in that place, I am afraid that I won't get there again!! Is this
the beginning of the one pointed yoga, and it is just a question of continuing and practice?

Many, m any than ks for your replies.

Peter Apps
Sao Paulo, Brazil (February 20 0 2)
1Maintain trackless consciousness, like a bird flying across the sky.1 Meditation by the great Tibetan sage
and teacher Gam popa for m aintain in g the unm odulated, natural state of m ind.

The purpose of this m editation is to m aintain undistracted m indfulness while rem aining aware of the non-
dual nature of consciousness. By stabilizing the m ind in tran quil absorption, while sim ultaneously studying
the abidin g nature of m ind, we can em bark upon the path of self-realization.

Direct experience of this state will lead to the first or one-pointed yoga, which is designated as a sin gle
pointed awareness of the m ind's essential nature. The m editator will have gain ed insight into the sim plicity
of consciousness, which while m an ifesting itself uninterruptedly is detached from transitory thoughts.
Edward Plotkin
1 The Four Yogas, Ch. 11, p. 127. Gampopa (10 79-1153), Tibetan Kagyü lineage

I feel a deep sense of gratitude. Because of your book, which I'm reading again , and through our em ail con-
versations, I am experiencing such an exciting desire to get on with it, to engage the true work that opens
through m editation . I find m yself taking m om ents otherwise engaged in thin king or reading to get still and
observe.

I have read so m any books about the transcendental and have experim ented with som e power plants that
cause a shift in the assem blage point, and through that have been in this place of wonderful tim eless still-
ness that I have called Ground Zero 1; where even m y breathing stops and everythin g is just suspended, just
present awareness. My soul has longed for som ethin g that I could never quite put m y fin ger on . I've gone to
different gurus, teachers and channels and stayed with these only for brief periods because the people and
the rituals, the dogm a that surround these for the m ost part seem counter productive.

So m y gratitude is that som ething is now Clear. It is for your straight talk. For your courage to walk this
path and then talk about it to us. Again , for your willin gness to be in com m unication and the sense of you as
a real person in real tim e, knowin g the freedom to break the bonds of person and tim e.

In Love - Respect & Gratitude,

Paul Huff
Rain ier, Washington
1 The shift in the assem blage point experienced with en theogens (psychoactive power plants, i.e. m arijuana,
peyote, etc.) is awesom e an d tem porary. It m ay awaken the soul to an unspecified longin g, the place where
‘everything is just suspended’.

This is the position of the assem blage point where don J uan noted the world stops. Over tim e, as the ap-
prentice becom es m ore proficient in m editative absorption , attention stabilizes at center, Paul Huff's
Ground Zero. Eventually, without relying on entheogens, the awaken ed m editator effortlessly resides in

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Guide To Don Juan’s Nagualism Edward Plot kin
& Esot eric Buddhism
 4

m editative absorption, the sam adhi of the nonm editation yoga.

Don J uan instructed his apprentices from a position of the assemblage point he referred to as heightened
awareness, the equivalent to m editative absorption. In one of the m ost delightful of Castaneda's books, La
Gorda and Carlos Castaneda consider seeing the lum inous m old of m an:
“Did you ever see the m old, Gorda?” I asked. “Sure, when I becam e com plete again. ....The Nagual (don
J uan) said that som etim es if we have enough personal power we can catch a glim pse of the mold even
though we are not sorcerers; when that happens we say that we have seen God. He said that if we call it
God it is the truth. The mold is God.”
The Second Ring of Power, Carlos Castaneda
Having stopped the world, the apprentice studies consciousness itself, aided by the enlightened songs of master
seers. As the m ysteries of awareness unravel the nature of the soul's longing is resolved in the em ergence of the
Spirit. From the witness-position in consciousness it is seen that the self is a dream arising in consciousness,
and that the true nature of consciousness is the Divine Self of God.

Edward Plotkin
en·theo·gen [literally - God within; God or spirit facilitating] a psychoactive sacram ental substance; a plant or
chem ical derivative taken to effect religious experience.

I began studying Tibetan Buddhism just a few years ago. I am certain the tim ing is just right for your arri-
val on the scene to help integrate the teachings of don J uan with the teachings I have gained during the
past 7 years. I left m y teacher relationship in J uly, '99. How good it feels to have that open space filled
with som ething really wonderful.

I like the clarity of your writing. With certain books, I have the feeling of an ‘over voice’ speaking. It is as if
I am reading the words, yet a voice is speaking in an energy way that puts m e on full alert. The ‘over voice’
is not saying the sam e as the written words. The ‘over voice’ carries the deeper m eaning or intent of the
words, and it moves into my m ind/ body in a very different way1 than books that do not carry this ‘over
voice’. The Four Yogas carries this ‘over voice’.

I am so thankful to you for your journey, and for your writing of your book.
Teresa Ram sey
Dayton, Ohio
1Carlos Castaneda experienced this heightened awareness when in the presence of the Nagual don J uan. The
Nagual's blow to the assemblage point, and especially teachings delivered from the transcendental position of
awareness have this extraordinary effect. The Four Yogas em powers this shift in awareness. The em ergence of
the ‘double’ or ‘witness-consciousness’ is a prelude to the development of fearlessness, serenity, wisdom , and
ultim ate enlightenm ent.

Tranquility and insight are the essential requirem ents. Tranquil absorption is the foundation for insight into
the nature of m ind and ultim ate reality. When thought projections are cleared the m ind becom es stable and
immobile. J ust as salt dissolves in water, the mind dissolves into its intrinsic nature.
Edward Plotkin

Your book is great. I really want to achieve m y dream . Please, let m e know if this book is available in the
Russian language.

Thank you very m uch.

Natasha Tsibulskaya
Portland, Oregon

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Guide To Don Juan’s Nagualism Edwar d Plot k in
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 5

I have com pleted retreats with Bokar Rinpoche (dharm a heir to Kalu Rinpoche1) and Lam a Surya DAs
(Western Dzogchen teacher 2 ), and meditate in the very hierarchical, but profoundly intelligent Shambhala
Dharm adhatu path 3 (Chögyam Trungpa legacy and sangha 4 ). Your book is an extraordinary exegesis, and series
of signposts in content and meaning. Thank you for your book.

J oel Puleo
Medical College of Wisconsin
Milwaukee, Wisconsin

1A master of meditation practice in the Nyingm a Dzogchen and Kagyü Mahamudra tradition, Kalu Rinpoche
(190 5-1989) taught extensively in Am erica and Europe. During his three visits to the West, Kalu Rinpoch e
founded teaching centers in over a dozen countries. Mahamudra is an advanced doctrine and practice of the
Kagyüpa order of Tibetan Buddhism, and a foundation teaching presented in The Four Yogas Of Enlighten-
m ent.

2Dzogchen (The Great Perfection) is the consumm ate practice of the Nyingm a lineage of Tibetan Buddhism,
and an exceptional path towards the fully awakened state of enlightenm ent.
3The Shambhala tradition teaches activities that ‘awaken’ the m editator through m indfulness practices. The
three gates of Shambhala are: Dharmadhatu, for the study of traditional Buddhism; Shambhala Training,
which em powers a fully lived life through the awakening of discerning wisdom ; and Nalanda, a contem plative
approach and discipline that explores relating to the world as it is.

4 Chögyam Trungpa Rin poche (1939-1987) was a Tibetan Buddhist Kagyü m editation m aster. Chögyam
Trungpa published six books (including Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior), established three m edita-
tion centres and a contem plative university, Naropa Institute.

The lineage of The Four Yogas Of Enlightenm ent book is the Nagualism of don J uan, Kashm ir Shaivist nondu-
alism, Tibetan Nyingm a Dzogchen and Kagyü Mahamudra meditation, and the nondual Buddhism of Adi Da
Sam raj.

Edward Plotkin

I am finding The Four Yogas to be of considerable value, being very fam iliar with the concepts presented.
I have practiced Vajrayana 1 at the Feet of a com pletely unknown western born Master (fem ale) since 1974.
I am also very well versed in the works of Adi Da and Castaneda, so for m e the book is a wonderful sum -
m ation and source of reference for all those aspects of m y own Practice.

J oshua Rosslee <joshua@hixnet.co.za.>

J ohannesburg, South Africa
1Vaj rayana or ‘indest ruct ible vehicle’ t raining generally places em phasis on t he m ast er- st udent
relat ionship. Perfect ed in Tibet , Vaj rayana is based on t ransm ission and em powerm ent .

For furt her t hought s on t he t eachings of Adi Da , see t his sit e; Ken Wilber discusses The Dawn
Horse Test am ent of Adi Da Sam raj , wit h Edward Plot kin com m ent ary.
Edward Plot kin

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Guide To Don Juan’s Nagualism Edwar d Plot k in
& Esot er ic Buddhism
 6

Thank you for m aking a significant contribution to the understanding of the Great Tradition of religion as
a unified legacy of m ankind.

Let m e announce where m y prejudices lies: as a devotee of Sri Bhagavan Adi Da, m y practice is centered
on Ishta-Guru-Bhakti Yoga, or devotion to my m ost beloved guru.

Nevertheless, I feel I can recomm end your text quite highly to those not prepared for submission to a
guru.

Best wishes, and keep m e inform ed of your future works.

Louis Nelson <Lnelson@Op.net>

Paoli, Pennsylvania

I want you to know that your book has m oved m e forward significantly, it is in line with m y own work and
personal growth. I thank you from the depth of my heart. If ever I m ay be of service to you let m e know.
Garry Isenstadt <eaglesgift@aol.com >
La J olla, California

Your work is extraordinary. I am astounded by its clarity. I found you because of Hubert Benoit (The Su-
prem e Doctrine: Psychological encounters in Zen thought). He has long been a ‘m entor’ of m ine. I had
been floundering in my own process, trying to organize the profusion of m aterial and processes.

‘You don't have to reinvent the wheel’ the inner voice said. Then, I got a ‘hit’ that I was supposed to look
up Benoit's nam e on the internet...and there you were. I cannot begin to tell you what a pleasure your
book is bringing m e. It is the next step I very m uch needed...a m ap of the myriad things I had accum u-
lated and confirm ation of m uch of the process.

I feel very privileged to have the opportunity to study The Four Yogas...and to m ake it part of my own
process.
J udith Tim mons
Pensacola, Florida

A few weeks ago I bought a copy of The Four Yogas. Prior to stumbling onto this I had over the past few
years read parts of books on Buddhism and a few articles on Zen in particular. By chance I also came
across three of Castaneda's books - A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, A Separate Reality, and J ourney to Ixtlan.
Buddhism, which has becom e my religion, I could understand at least superficially, but don J uan's teach-
ings seem ed like an im possible riddle, and I never saw the connection between these two philosophies.

When reading Castaneda I thought I was either too stupid to com prehend it, or this was a load of bullshit
from a whacked out hippie spacehead. Thanks to you I now realize that it wasn't like that at all. I'm not
stupid and don J uan was sim ply brilliant. I have now arrived at chapter five of The Four Yogas (I try to
read it slowly and carefully, and I don't have m uch tim e for it because of university studies) and I have
been served one revelation after another. I realize now that m y reason for not being able to com prehend
don J uan's cryptic lectures, was that his apparatus of term s differs so fundam entally from that of both
eastern and western philosophy.

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Guide To Don Juan’s Nagualism Edwar d Plot k in
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 7

Furtherm ore, I have found several links to western philosophers in your text. Am ong others I see Kant,
Hegel and Husserl's thoughts between the lines. The difference of course being that they lacked the
knowledge of m editation (or not-doing). You're probably aware of these sim ilarities, but I thought I'd
m ention it just in case. I'm running short of tim e here, so I'll cut the rest short: Thanks a lot for opening
m y eyes, The Four Yogas book has been worth every penny.

Yours with gratitude,

Christer Dehlin <christer.dehlin@hfstud.uio.no>
University of Oslo, Norway

Ed- I've finished reading The Four Yogas of Enlightenm ent. I want to take a m om ent and express m y
gratitude.

Little bit of history. Over the past 5 - 6 years (m aybe even longer), I have been unable to embrace the un-
ion of em ptiness with physical reality. I could not explain this to anyone! I was beginning to think I was
dysfunctional in relationships. Every tim e I would get close to som eone, my projection onto them , of my
‘stain of em ptiness’ frightened m e trem endously. It was my sure death! I could not explain what was go-
ing on. I finally gave up!

I understood ‘nothingness’ conceptually and intellectually. I am a Ken Wilber fan. But this fear was over-
whelm ing, unbearable and stuffed deep down into my subconscious. I really didn't want to face its reality.
Well, anyway, I really connected with your description of this deep terror. It has been a very frustratin g
and gradual process in releasing and understanding this intense emotion.

I stum bled onto your book at the right tim e. I don't think I could have consciously integrated what was
happening to m e without your book. Your book allowed m e to step into a process of understanding the
void with appreciation.

Once again, thank you.

Elijah DeRoche
Boise, Idaho

I am actively engrossed in exploring consciousness, and m y projections within. I have been a student of
Ken Wilber's The Spectrum Of Consciousness 1 since it's publication. I have already learned from your
book, just from reading from a different angle/ perspective, which is exactly what you stated in the very
beginning of your book.2 I look forward to the continued study of the knowledge that your book contains.

Michael Wheaton
Kopolei, Hawaii
1Ken Wilber's book present s a synt hesis of East ern and West ern pat hs t o enlight enm ent , a t our
de force in t he m apping of t ranscendent al awareness.
2 Medit at ive awareness is synergist ically enhanced t hrough explorat ion of t he t eachings of differ-
ent m ast ers and t radit ions. Wit h an underst anding achieved in m ore t han one t radit ion, cross
verificat ion of t erm s and st at es of consciousness can be correlat ed. Wit hout correlat ion, progress
is exceedingly difficult because t here is no cont rast ing point of view wit h which one can glean an
int ended m eaning nor a deeper underst anding.
Edward Plot kin

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Guide To Don Juan’s Nagualism Edwar d Plot k in
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 8

I have just opened your book and I have already found it more than I expected it to be. I had noticed the
sim ilarity between the teachings of Tibetan Yoga/ Buddhism and Nagualism and was searching for Ti-
betan Buddhist inform ation on the net when I came upon your site. I was first im pressed with your site
design: elegant and to the point. Now I see that your book is very valuable, or can be, to anyone who de-
cides to take awareness seriously.

Thank you.
Charles deWinter <dewinter@montrose.net>
Telluride, Colorado

I am on the spiritual path for m ore than 30 years now. I started with an initiation into Kriya yoga by Pa-
ram ahamsa Hariharananda, went on with 10 years work of Bagwan (Osho), then Tibetan Buddhism
(Kagyü lineage by J igm e Rinpoche), followed by an initiation into sham anism by Don Agustin Rivas from
Peru, who works with ayahuasca. The energy I got contact with on the latter was so strong that m y assem -
blage point broke loose, and it took m e 3 m onth to stabilize a new cohesion of m y world perception. I feel
near to form lessness, but have not m anifested it in total until now.

My chakras are floating free, except a block of energy over m y head. I am solo auditing on OT 2, but I am
not in the Scientology church, but the technique to handle stuck flows is incredible. I also do Tensegrity,
since I have studied Castaneda for about 25 years now. I have had som e glim pses about the totality of self
(Tonal-Nagual, Sam sara-Nirvana, the physical universe - the beyond) but I have the sharp realization,
that I have not yet reached it.

Ingo
Vienna, Austria

Unt il one can effort lessly at t ain and m aint ain t he wit ness- posit ion in consciousness ( t he non-
m edit at ion yoga or m oksha- bhava sam adhi) , it will seem t o t he m edit at or t hat t here is som e-
t hing left t o be reached.

Ayahuasca, m arij uana, peyot e, and ot her m ind alt ering subst ances, shift t he assem blage point
away from it s cust om ary posit ion, t he self or ego. Once t he shift away from self is accom plished,
awareness oft en feels ecst at ic in it s newfound liberat ion. Of course, when t he effect of t he sub-
st ance wears off t he m edit at or is once again confront ed wit h t he self. I f t he m edit at or is unable
t o at t ain t he wit ness posit ion in m edit at ive awareness, he/ she will rem ain ent rained in what ever
st at e arises. Subst it ut ing one illusory st at e, t he ego, for anot her, t he m ind alt ered drug induced
st at e, will not be resolved int o t he freedom of awareness of enlight enm ent . The cycle of drug in-
duced apparent liberat ion m ay result in habit uat ion unless sham anic or yogic int ervent ion t akes
place.

Once t he warrior has sufficient personal power t o st op t he world ( savakalpa sam adhi) in yogic or
m edit at ive awareness, t he self is seen as a nondual, illusory, nonbinding proj ect ion in conscious-
ness, and ent rainm ent in t he ‘self’ is severed. Wit h furt her pract ice a t urning about in t he seat of
consciousness occurs, and enlight enm ent is perm anent .
From t he fourt h yoga, t he nonm edit at ion yoga, or m oksha- bhava sam adhi, it is seen t hat t here
is not hing t o at t ain or reach. Consciousness configures t he dream of being in a field of appear-
ance and em pt iness. Ult im at ely and et ernally consciousness precedes m at t er. There is no ‘out
t here’ beyond consciousness. You are Always and Already.....t he One

The Four Yogas Of Enlight enm ent ht t p: / / www. Four Yogas.com

Guide To Don Juan’s Nagualism Edwar d Plot k in
& Esot er ic Buddhism
 9

1. 3.
Jesus said to them, By perfecting this nonmeditation stage
"When you make the two into one, The meditator attains naked, unsupported
when you make the inner like the outer awareness.
and the outer like the inner, This nondiscriminatory awareness is the
and the upper like the lower, meditation!
when you make male into female into a single one, By transcending the duality of meditation and
so that the male will not be male meditator,
and the female will not be female, External and internal realities,
when you make eyes replacing an eye, The meditating awareness dissolves itself
a hand replacing a hand, Into luminous clarity.
and an image replacing an image, Transcending the intellect,
then you will enter the kingdom." It is without the duality of equipoise and
postequipoise.
Such is the quintessence of mind.
The Secret Teachings Of Jesus:
Four Gnostic Gospels, Marvin Meyer Phagdru Dorje Gyalpo,
Tibetan Kagyü lineage

2. 4.
Jesus said: I Am The Secret Of The Heart
On that day you will realize, I Am The Heart Itself, Revealed.
that I am in my Father, What You Must Realize Is This: I Am You!
and you are in me, I Am The Heart Itself, Revealed To You,
and I am in you. and To Be As You.

John 14:20 The Dawn Horse Testament: The Testament

of Secrets of the Divine World-Teacher and
True Heart-Master,
Avatar Adi Da Samraj

I highly recomm end Ed's technique's and writing. He is as concise as possible for the topics, and there is much
there directly or tangentially related to what we are involved in/ with/ near/ around...

Ed posts on and off, but his balance and content is so sublime and welcom e. :)

....he is quite knowledgeable about energy flow from more than one discipline.

Ed has balance without truncation, a rare act, indeed. :)

don Pequeño, Houston, Texas

donpequeno@aol.com to alt.dream s.castaneda newsgroup

The Four Yogas Of Enlight enm ent ht t p: / / www. Four Yogas.com

Guide To Don Juan’s Nagualism Edwar d Plot k in
& Esot er ic Buddhism
 10

I love the book, and that's a real com plim ent because I'm a writer and picky, picky, picky. Very clear and
m ysterious at the sam e tim e. Lovely. You've been a great help already. Synthesis is one of my favorite
things.
Patricia Donovan <pdonovan@buffalo.edu>
Senior Editor/ Hum anities, Architecture, Education
University at Buffalo

I have just begun to read your book, and I just find it wonderful. I will keep you inform ed about the result.

Gilberto F. Bicalho <gilbert@rio.com .br>

Rio de J aneiro, Brazil

.....posted in honor of Ed Plotkin, whose insight and guidance in m atters of perception have been invalu-
able to m e, and in the true spirit of nagualism .

Carlos Grau
m atus1@concentric.net to alt.dream s.castaneda newsgroup

This is one of the best books I've read in years. It clearly transpires both your academic research work,
and what is more im portant even your personal involvem ent and experience. In the past I have worked
hard on Castaneda's books and I entirely agree with your treatm ent of his work and your cross-correlation
of term s.
Piero.Cinguino@cselt.stet.it
Torino, Italy

I have been a student of Siddha Yoga for 10 years. In my early college experience I was an anthropology
student and studied Carlos Castaneda works. As a therapist for 13 years, I resonate with J ungian theory in
m any ways.

As a seeker, I have dabbled in m any areas, trying on this one and that one; not unlike m any modern day
explorers. However, it often troubles m e that there is so m uch inform ation out there, it is so easy to be-
com e confused. (One of m y life lessons no doubt) I have been trying to find the golden thread that ties it
together.

Thank you once again,

Harriet Cianci
Terryville, Connecticut

The Four Yogas Of Enlight enm ent ht t p: / / www. Four Yogas.com

Guide To Don Juan’s Nagualism Edwar d Plot k in
& Esot er ic Buddhism
 11

I now have the book and it's excellent. I'm very pleased to read how you state the don J uan m aterial in
term s of the 4 yogas - it's really a new perspective for m e. Especially helpful to understand ‘seeing’ better
(and to acknowledge that I've actually had the experience of ‘seeing’ myself and can recognize it, even if I
don't ‘see’ all the tim e.) Sam e for what you write re the assemblage point. I've been dazzled by the ‘special
effects’ of the Castaneda books, and did not understand these teachings quite this way. Also interesting
and new for m e - how you present the ally. When all this sinks in a little m ore I'll write som e on it and ask
som e questions.

I feel I'm understanding what you're saying in term of Padm asambhava's book on listening in the Bardo 1...
The 4 yogas are what the Dhyani Buddhas and their respective consorts are about - Vajrassattva, Ratna-
sam bhava, Am itabha, and Amoghasiddhi. The book throws m uch light on this process, and I feel encour-
aged that I can m ake use of this ‘m ap’ to navigate my own crossing over...to stalk enlightenm ent. It's be-
ginning to seem m ore doable.

Thank you for your help, and for the trem endous book. I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who sees
that what Buddhism and don J uan are talking about are not com pletely different things.
Aida Rodriguez-Parnas <aparnas@fclass.net>
St. Louis, Missouri

1The Five Dhyani (m editation) Buddhas....Vairochana, Akshobhya, Ratnasambhava, Am itabha, and Amogha-
siddhi, visualized during m editation embody five transcendental wisdom s. The Bardo Thodol, known as the
Tibetan Book of the Dead, and attributed to Padm asambhava, guides the aspirant towards these transcendental
wisdom s, and the resultant spiritual transformation and enlightened consciousness.

Edward Plotkin

I am enjoying your book very m uch, and m editating on The Four Yogas everyday to deepen m y insight.

Thank you and best wishes.

Klaus Wieben
Melbourne, Australia

.....a quick com m ent, here: I've studied The Four Yogas of Enlightenm ent and enjoyed it im m ensely!
Som e really hard work went into that docum ent; ....this is top-rate!
Mark Seven Smith
m viism ith@aol.com to alt.dream s.castaneda newsgroup

Thanks a lot for everything; The Four Yogas, and your tim ely correspondence. I carry a copy of the text in
m y book bag to work daily. I believe I told you before that m any of the traditions that you have repre-
sented were a part of m y own personal study, and you've seem ingly lifted each of the m ajor ones
(especially don J uan's Nagualism ...which is usually where other people get off the boat) and focused on
them , highlighting their sim ilarities. For this effort, I am truly grateful---if, for no other reason, only for
the kinship of souls who refuse to discrim inate the teaching for the teacher.

Bless you and your efforts.

Phillip Hale
Detroit, Michigan

The Four Yogas Of Enlight enm ent ht t p: / / www. Four Yogas.com

Guide To Don Juan’s Nagualism Edwar d Plot k in
& Esot er ic Buddhism
 12

J ust a note to let you know I'm reading your book in m ore detail now and find it even better than I did at
first. It's interesting that it begins about where m y own book ends. Further, if I had your vocabulary, I'd
be dangerous.
Scott Sm ith <kimm erjohn@aol.com >
Lewisville, Texas

Whenever I think of you, or take your book into m y hands, there's a lot of power com ing through. I can
feel that you really m ade it. Will follow this path in spite of all reactions. Am slowly grasping the idea that
I have to be a source instead of the seeker.

Bernd Schaefer <Cenninah@wolfsburg.de>

Velpke, Germ any

I visited your site and like it very m uch. First let m e com plim ent you on your page design. You've found a
way to m ake fram es work for you so that it enhances the surfing experience. Not an easy task I'd say based
on som e sites I've visited. I like the notebook m otif.

But more im portantly, I like your spiritual approach. I have enjoyed a few don J uan books, dabbled in
Siddha Yoga and found som ething special in Buddhism without seeing any of those paths excluding the
others. I agree with your valuing of cross verification. If wise m en in the Mexican desert and in Tibet com e
up with the sam e truths there m ust be som ething there.

Tom Barrett
Interlude: An Internet Retreat

Readers are invit ed t o cont ribut e t heir reviews t o The Four Yogas

Please include com m ent s t hat you would like t o share wit h ot her readers from
around t he world who have been m edit at ing on The Four Yogas.

Argent ina, Aust ralia, Aust ria, Belgium , Brazil, Canada, Denm ark, England, France,
Germ any, Greece, Hong Kong, I reland, I t aly, Japan, Jordan, Kuwait , Mexico, Net h-
erlands, Net herlands Ant illes, New Zealand, Norway, Puert o Rico, Rom ania, Scot -
land, Singapore, Sout h Africa, Spain, Sweden, Swit zerland, Thailand, Turkey,
Ukraine, Unit ed Arab Em irat es, Unit ed St at es, and Venezuela.

I look forward t o hearing from you, and t hank you for your part icipat ion in raising t he worldwide
banner of enlight ened awareness

The Four Yogas Of Enlight enm ent ht t p: / / www. Four Yogas.com

Guide To Don Juan’s Nagualism Edwar d Plot k in
& Esot er ic Buddhism
 13

Begin the journey towards enlightenment

The Four Yogas Of Enlightenment, the next step in learning to stop the
world
Begin the journey towards incredible knowledge and Self mastery
with the Guide To don Juan’s Nagualism & Esoteric Buddhism

Table of contents, bibliography, recommended reading list, fully indexed.

THE FOUR YOGAS OF ENLI GHTENMENT ©

Guide To Don Juan's Nagualism & Esoteric Buddhism
Available exclusively at FourYogas.com

Home URL: http://www.FourYogas.com

Edward Plotkin, Madison NJ

All rights reserved. Perpetual copyright claimed.

The Four Yogas Of Enlight enm ent ht t p: / / www. Four Yogas.com

Guide To Don Juan’s Nagualism Edwar d Plot k in
& Esot er ic Buddhism